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How to build a sphere in Minecraft

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Brodie The Nerd
Level 44 : Master Nerd
18
Hey guys, instead of doing my usual command block tutorial, I decided to change things up and make a building tutorial. I have heard far to many times people say "There's no such thing as spheres in Minecraft" meanwhile I'm building them myself. So, I decided to teach you guys how to build spheres yourself.

To start off, you will need to know how to build a circle, since the entire build relies on your ability to built a perfect (or as close as possible to perfect) circle. If you aren't confident in building circles, or just want to be sure, click on the tab below.

How to build circles
Before you start, you need to understand that anything you do on one eighth of the outside of the circle must be repeated on every other eighth of it. Now, carry on as you were...

Start off by building 4 beams going in opposite directions, making sure that each side is the same length. In the example below, I build each of mine 8 blocks away from the center.
Click here to view the photo

Next, you will need to do some math. Get the length of blocks it is from the center to the end of one of the beams (not including the center) and divide it by pi (π). If you get a decimal, round it to the nearest whole number. In my example, I did: 8 / π, which equals 2.55 and is rounded up to 3. This is the distance that will be added onto each side at the end of each beam. If you don't understand what I mean, here's a photo of my example:
How to build a sphere in MinecraftClick here to view the photo

Then, just slowly decrease the amount of blocks as you go down, adding onto each side of each quarter as you go, until each end meets. There are three ways ends of a circle will meet:
-The 2x2 L shape
-2 blocks diagonal to each other
-A singe block
If you go away, you should be able to tell instantly whether or not your circle is too octagonal or too square, or if it's perfect, since our eyes do a great job at telling those small differences. If it doesn't feel right, just try again. To help you judge, the number calculated with pi before should be the distance between the end of the flat surface and the point where the two ends meet. It's a bit hard to explain so here's a photo. Here's a photo of my finished circle:
Click here to view photo

Once you are confident enough with your circle building skills, feel free to move on to the spheres.


To build a sphere, you first need to understand how spheres work. If you cut a sphere at any given point and angle, both pieces of the cut would have a circle on the cut face, meaning that any straight line drawn on the sphere would wrap around and form a perfect circle. This is why being able to build a basic circle is really important for building a perfect sphere, and is also why being able to build perfect spheres can really help with building circles at complex angles that do not follow any of the axis planes in the game, since giving a perfect cut through the sphere at any angle will leave a circle on its face.

Now that you understand how spheres work, its time to build one. To start building the sphere, you will need to build 6 beams going in opposite directions starting from the same point and all being the same length. Going on from my example in the quick circle building tutorial, my example below is also 8 blocks from the center. Click here to view my example. Now, using four of these 6 beams, build a circle. Here's an example of what I mean. Once you are happy with your circle, rebuild it twice, creating a circle on the x, y and z axis'. Click here to see my example. Now that you have your scaffolding done, we need to build the actual sphere. On a flat surface of one of the circles, build a smaller circle with the same diameter as that surface facing away from the center of the circle, like this. When you are happy with this circle repeat it on each flat surface of the scaffolding. It should look like this before you fill in each circle, and like this after you fill in each circle. Now that you have done the first layer, move on to the next. If you did the first lot of circles correctly, the next layer should go out the exact same amount of blocks on each side of each circle. If not... well.... sucks to be you (although i did the exact same thing. starting over may suck, but that's okay). If so, then we will build another circle, this one going around the first layer but one block behind. It should look like this, being its own circle just behind another one. You see why it's essential to be able to build a circle now? When you are happy with your circle, repeat it on each side, making it look a bit like my example. If your circle has reached this point and still has a lot of gaps (like mine), just repeat the process of going a block backward until the circles begin to overlap, sorta like this example. This just means you are nearly finished. The process is exactly the same at this point, with the only difference being that most of the blocks in each circle would have already been built. You know you have built a perfect sphere when the calculations for the last few circles match up perfectly with what's already been built. Eventually, you will reach a point where you only need to build 8 more blocks. Treasure up these last moments as the sphere goes from being an overly complicated fete of mathematics in a child's game to a perfect sphere.

You may not get it perfect the first time, but once you get the idea of how spheres work, you should be able to build them at any scale. Impress your friends, or yourself with some of the things you build with spheres! Because so many people think they're hard to build, you don't see them often enough in Minecraft. Like, who doesn't like looking at something they've built thinking of how perfectly round it is. I'm not just a weirdo, right? ....

But if you enjoyed this tutorial, please check out some of my other ones where I'm in my comfort zone, command blocks. If you want more building basics tutorials, please say so in the comments, I like feedback. But for now, I'll see y'all later.
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