Minecraft Building 101 - Build Planning, Size & Shape - How to be a better builder in Minecraft Ep.1
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GamingTranscript
00:00 Hello there and welcome to AdiCraft. People often ask me how they can become a better builder. Well
00:04 today is the first episode in a new series that will help you improve all elements of your building
00:09 ability. Whether you're starting out in the game or a seasoned professional, there will be something
00:12 here to level up your builds. Covering the fundamentals of building and design, and methods
00:17 that you can apply to any style or size of builds, the series will be broken down into manageable
00:22 sections, each focused on a particular piece of the puzzle. With all of these put together,
00:27 there'll be no limit to what you'll be able to create. The first video will be looking at the
00:31 start of the process, build planning, size and shape. Before we get started in the video, please
00:36 take the time to hit that like button and hit that subscribe button if you're not already, so you
00:41 won't miss out on any future episodes. It's free and it really really helps the channel. Now this
00:47 may seem like an obvious one, but knowing what you want to build is an important first step.
00:51 If you have a clear vision of what you're looking to achieve, then the finished outcome is going to
00:54 be much better than if you just start placing blocks. If there's a certain style that you're
00:58 looking for, then maybe look at some reference pictures online to give you some ideas. Understand
01:03 what the purpose of your build is, and if you're just looking for an aesthetic reason or if you
01:07 want to use the build itself in a particular way. Once you've got a clear view in your head of what
01:12 you're looking to achieve, then you're ready for the next step. The phrase "location, location,
01:16 location" also rings very very true in Minecraft, as there are three different dimensions that you
01:21 could choose to build from, and within those dimensions any number of different biomes and
01:25 biome combinations that might fit your build. It's also important to understand the geography to make
01:30 sure that your build will fit in, and also whether you've got enough space so that you can actually
01:35 do everything that you'd like to do. Because of this, it's worth exploring and looking around at
01:39 the various different terrains and various different areas that you could build in,
01:44 just to make sure that you've picked things that are right, because there is a huge variety of
01:48 possibilities. Another thing to actually understand is the direction of your build,
01:52 and what I mean by that is shown here. So as you can see, we've got a house here that looks
01:58 lovely, just a pretty basic house, same kind of starter house that many people might build.
02:04 I've built this, and I'm using shaders here, and I've built this so that the sun will catch it,
02:10 and it looks fantastic in the shaders. Now over here we have exactly the same house,
02:15 but as you can see, it's just built in a slightly different direction. Because of where the sun is
02:19 in Minecraft, particularly with shaders, this will never ever get the sun on the front of the
02:24 building. So again, it's very important to make sure that you are getting the right direction,
02:29 the right location, and the right terrain in order to start your build process.
02:34 Size and shape are the next things to consider once you know what you're building and where
02:39 you want to build it, and I've hopped onto my Japanese creative world to show you what I mean.
02:44 So the first thing that I'm going to be talking about is scale. A Minecraft block, as you probably
02:50 know, is one meter by one meter by one meter if it were in real scale. So you can scale your builds
02:56 to the real world if you wanted to, using the blocks, however you're obviously not going to
03:01 be able to get so many details in. It's not quite going to match up, because when you've got meter
03:06 scale things, then thin walls, partitions, stuff like that, is always going to look a little bit
03:11 strange. You can however scale your builds up and make use of some of these blocks to give you more
03:17 detail, more depth, and things like a more rounded pillar that you've got on this particular tori
03:23 gate here. Then using some of the things like the trapdoors, you can carry that on around the bottom.
03:29 So once you've picked your scale, then you can think about the size of the build as well.
03:34 So again, all of these are tori gates, but as you can see, they come in a variety of shapes and
03:40 sizes. So you need to know that you have got enough space in terms of the footprint around your build,
03:47 so you need to know roughly what size it is. Are you building a little tiny small starter house,
03:52 in which case you won't need much space? Or are you building a giant mega base, in which case
03:57 you'll probably need tens if not hundreds of blocks in each direction to work out what you're
04:03 going to build. Here we have an example of this in the pagoda in front of us. Now this has got a 29
04:10 by 29 footprint, so this is actually quite a big build. And obviously it goes quite high up as well,
04:15 so if you're building this on top of a mountain, then you need to make sure that you've got enough
04:20 space at the top so that nothing interferes with it. Again, if you wanted to build it in a cave,
04:24 you need to understand the height, you need to understand the dimensions on the floor,
04:28 you need to think about things like, is there going to be an overhang for a roof like this?
04:33 Alternatively, you might want a pagoda, but you might want something that's considerably smaller.
04:37 So you might want something that's a bit more like this, which has only got a 19 by 19 footprint,
04:42 and is significantly shorter. So understanding what the scale is, and what the size of your
04:47 build is going to be, lets you work out what rough area you want for the footprint, and then you can
04:52 start on the next stage of planning. Laying out your builds is a great way to make sure you
04:57 understand more about what the finished result will look like. It lets you experiment with different
05:02 ideas, and it means that if you're using something like creative or world edit, and you choose to use
05:07 something like wool, you can quite easily replace this with the right blocks that you're actually
05:11 going to use, and try different combinations of things. If you're in survival, using something
05:16 like dirt or netherrack is quite useful, because it allows you to place blocks that are easily
05:21 removable, and switch things around if you've got different ideas that you want to try out.
05:26 So if we were, for example, creating a starter house, we might first of all just create a simple
05:32 box like this. Now this gives us an idea, when we stand on the ground or stand inside, of what kind
05:38 of space that we're going to be working with, and what we might want to do with things. It's not a
05:43 very interesting shape, so once you've got something like this, you might want to add some additional
05:47 areas to it, but again you can do this using your wool. So you might say, okay I'm going to use
05:52 some wool here, and I'm going to come out and create a little annex or extra portion on the
05:58 back of the build here. That makes it already much more interesting. So say that this is the front,
06:03 you might say, okay I want to have a nice entranceway, so let's have a front coming out
06:08 like this, and let's make it so we've got a nice double door in the middle. So we're going to have
06:13 it too wide, like so, and by adding these on, and using this, the wool method, to actually put your
06:21 frame in place, you can start to really get some interesting outcomes with what you're looking to
06:27 build. So let's add another section on the end for just a little overhang bit, and what we've
06:33 noticed here is we've actually built ourselves something that's got a two block centre. Now for
06:41 doing a roof and things like that, it's generally not the best, so what we'll do is we will move our
06:47 wall about like this, and then we can make sure that we've got ourselves a one block centre when
06:53 we do have the roof coming across the middle. And just little things like that, being able to assess
06:58 what you're actually doing as you go, makes it so much easier when you come to the build, because
07:03 you've got your basic structure to work from, you're not working from nothing. Now the builds
07:07 themselves, when you're looking at a single build like this, you can also quite easily come up and
07:12 say okay how tall do I want it, do I want it to be this tall, no that's a little bit too tall,
07:18 so we come across like this, and we add our frame right the way round, which not only gives us an
07:24 idea of the floor plan, but can also give us an idea of the structure. And by doing this you can
07:28 check out the different heights that you actually want to use for the different sections. So if this
07:33 is going to be an entranceway, let's say we don't want it to necessarily come all the way up,
07:38 so let's link that up, and you can see that you've got a height differential there with your main
07:43 area. Standing in front of the build you get a good idea of what it is. I'm going to be walking
07:47 through here so we can knock through this, I'm going to be coming into the build, there's not
07:52 going to be this stuff here, it's going to come up this height, so we're going to have a wall that
07:56 comes up like this, and yeah I can now see that I've got space, I can have a little storage area
08:03 in here, I can have all my crafting, you know exactly what you're working with. When it comes
08:07 to planning villages or towns or anything slightly more complicated than just a simple house,
08:13 then that's really when the layout of your build does come into its own. So as you can see here
08:19 we've set out a little settlement, and we've got a wall going around the outside, we've got
08:24 ourselves a nice little entranceway here, and then we've also got various different things,
08:29 a place that we've got with a lighthouse here, so you can use then the terrain to say what do
08:34 I want to do. We've got like some little fishing huts down here on the edge, and then we've got
08:39 this big castle here. It's also what I've done here, you'll notice is I've brought everything
08:44 for each build up to the same level, and then you can actually understand how the height difference
08:50 is in the ground that you're actually building on, because you can't always build on flat ground,
08:54 because in real life that doesn't really happen so much, but by bringing everything up to the
09:00 same level you can see where you will need to make allowances for these different heights,
09:04 and yeah for things like this one you can see that while actually you could have a floor
09:09 that's one level beneath, and some windows potentially here, or a back entrance,
09:15 and yeah by bringing everything up to that same level you can see how things are. It's also good
09:19 when you are planning something like this to make sure that you mix up the shapes that you've got,
09:24 so we've got some basic square type shapes and rectangular type shapes, and what I've also done
09:29 is I've thrown in some angled builds as well, some on 45 degrees like the majority of the castle here,
09:36 some on different angles. Now I will be covering angle builds and curves and things like that in a
09:43 later episode of this series, so make sure that you do subscribe for that, but as you can see here
09:47 it gives a real nice idea of where everything needs to go. Obviously you won't necessarily be
09:53 flying around, but if you are in survival what you can just do is simply pillar up and have a nice
09:59 bird's eye view on exactly what you're looking to create. The other thing that you can do when you
10:04 are creating builds like this is you can use the wool in the same way to actually understand a
10:11 little bit about the height that you want the builds to be. So here we've got a nice circle
10:15 which as I said could be something like a lighthouse. What you can do is you can pillar up
10:20 with the build and with the wool in the middle, and that can give you just an idea of how tall you
10:26 want it to be. So you might look at that and be actually it needs to be, if it's a lighthouse it
10:29 needs to be a bit taller. So working again in the three dimensions like you might do and have
10:34 something here to say well it's meant to be a tower, so up here I still want to be able to see
10:38 it as I'm coming across here. So that's a really nice build and that's a good height that we're
10:43 going to have, maybe even a little bit taller because we can have that. And that starts giving
10:49 you some structure, it gives you an idea of the variance in the height, because when you are
10:53 planning your builds again try not to make them all at the same height. If you've got something
10:58 like a little town or a settlement here then obviously there will be some that will be similar
11:03 heights, but it's the variation if you go and look around real buildings apart from specific lines of
11:10 terraces or if you're building something like that there is quite a lot of variation in things like
11:14 roof height. So consider that when you're building things out. So in terms of the first step of
11:21 getting your build planned, choosing where you want it to be, choosing which direction you want
11:26 it to be, the size and the scale that you want for your build specifically, and how you can lay that
11:32 out. That's covered everything for this first episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, please do
11:36 make sure that you leave a like and a comment if you have. There will be more of these episodes
11:40 coming out and as I say they'll be stepping through the other areas of the building process,
11:45 but if there is something specifically that you want me to cover let me know in the comments
11:48 beneath and I'll make sure that I can put that in a future video. But with all that said the last
11:53 thing to say is thank you very very much for watching and I will see you all next time on
11:57 Adicraft. Bye!