This is my first blog post, and i thought i would touch on a subject that few people (as far as i have seen) really talk about: The representation of our work.

Al Bahar Towers


This blog was spawned by a comment i received a few weeks ago on one of my projects, and i felt inspired to write about this. How many times have you come up to a project, and been misled by the featured image only to realize that the project itself does not live up to the expectations that the featured image created? As a person who likes to frequent the site for various people's architectural interpretations of real life buildings, i run into this problem on a regular basis. From this point on, i will use this perspective to explain this issue.

All too often, i run into projects where the featured image of the building is either a real world render (if it has not been built yet) or an image of the actual building and use this to represent their work, when it, in some cases, doesn't even look remarkably similar to their actual project. This is almost like a bait and switch routine to either get people to download their project or to get views. I personally feel that one's own work should represent their project, and only use real world renders or images only as reference images, which you can post alongside your project, but should not represent the project.

The next issue with representation of a project is, and i'm guilty of this, using one's own renderings to represent a project. This is not a taboo in my book, unlike using real world images, but this still can lead to a misrepresentation of one's projects. When you look at someone's images that have been rendered and edited (by Photoshop, Corel, or any other image editing software), how much of the project is actually properly represented? Herein lies a few problems that spawned the need for this.

Firstly we are well aware that the standard default textures of minecraft aren't the most appealing nor are they the most realistic. For someone pursuing architecture, and for creating semi-realistic architectural projects in minecraft, this is a very serious problem, and one that i am not alone in suffering from (as texture and resource packs are abundant on this site). So there is a strive for experiencing one's project in the most realistic of textures, and something that others who download the project may not experience if they do not possess your texture or resource pack. Thus, there is a lack of accurate representation of your project.

Secondly the lighting within minecraft is fairly unrealistic under multiple facets. Firstly, the daylighting within minecraft is entirely unrealistic. Light is supposed to be directional, and in minecraft, no matter the angle of the sun or the moon, the light emitted by them always comes directly from above. You cannot incorporate sunshading, the dynamic shadows of structure are not seen, and all of this further adds to the lack of realism, and can take away from the intent of the project. Secondly with the actual emitting objects (torches, glowstone, lamps), their isn't any radiance from these objects, nor is there an even spread of light from them (as in game lights, the whole block evenly lit, and bases it on the distance from the light emitting object. this gives a stair stepped diminishing of light on the surrounding blocks). Light does not behave like it does in game, and thus it becomes more apparent of the lack of realism in the project. Lastly is in the way that light behaves with an object. All objects, to varying degrees, reflect light, most notably is glass (though also equally notable is water). Minecraft is unable to render glass like this and thus only relies on a texture of a block to achieve the transparency, but neglects the reflection. This reflection is quintessential for realistic buildings (and with water, realistic environments). This is what really sparked the need for rendering software for minecraft projects. Rendering allows you to see your project under accurate lighting, which fosters a certain dynamic and realistic feel to the project that in game screenshots cannot achieve

Where things become a little grey when representing a project like this is when you start editing the images you have created of your project. It is far too easy to go into Photoshop (or a comparable program) and edit the image of your project to hide faults, clean up textures, or entirely change your project (in some of the renders that i have done for school, i have had to completely reconstruct certain parts in Photoshop to hide a mistake of the rendering software i was using (using Rhino 3d for the model, V-ray for rendering)). This, obviously, detracts from the accuracy that your images are portraying in representing your project. Another easy trick to add realism is to insert a sky texture (which i have done to every project), though you can argue that this does not accurately portray the sky within minecraft and further adds to the misrepresentation of one's work.

So there is a fine line that you have to walk: do you represent the project accurately by representing it with in game screenshots, thus accurately representing what a player might actually see when experiencing your project, or do you represent your project accurately by using rendering software to see how your project would look under realistic lighting and accurate textures and environments?

This site rewards the latter, and thus i have done this to most of the projects that i have presented on Planetminecraft. But why is that? When i first started posting to this site, i posted screenshots from within MCedit or from in game. They would get very little recognition. Once i started editing those screenshots (by adding a sky to the background, and adding lens flares), the projects started getting noticed. I went from getting maybe a hundred views on one project, to getting three to five times that within the same amount of time. When i started to render my projects, this same level of increased recognition occurred again (most notably, my New Alexandria Skyscraper, which it's four images (rendered, MCedit edited image, MCedit unedited image, and reference image) are shown below, went from 200 views in about a week, where its images were edited screenshots, to now exceeding 1200 views and 300 downloads, which far exceeded what i would normally get).

New Alexandria Skyscraper


The reason for this, i believe, is that we like beautiful images, and when we see an accurately lit, realistic build in minecraft with dynamic lighting, glare and reflections in the water and the glass, essentially what these rendering softwares are putting out, as compared to the in game images, are actually quite beautiful. And we are drawn to that.

So please, leave a comment with your opinions regarding this and, if this receives positive responses (diamonds, comments, subscribers), and if i can find the time, i may post more of these.