Mega Minecraft Building Guide: TomOnMars Unleashed!

When browsing my social media I tend to come across some rather vague comments how do I get good at building how do I start building how do I build like that how the short answer is that I’ve been building for 8 years I love learning I practice a lot and I haven’t gone

Outside since August 2021 and the long answer Is basically everything in this video is my own opinion please disagree with me in the comments it helps boost engagement in this video I will be covering the game’s limitations and how to work with them a range of Advanced Techniques to elevate your skill set creative building tools building categories and styles and

Finally having a strong mindset if by the end of the video you think that I’ve delivered on this statement I’d really appreciate a like let’s start with the basics fundamentally the Minecraft world is made of blocks most blocks are lovely cubes as you may know but there are a

Fair few irregular ones that make excellent ships for building and even even with these nice shapes we still lack perfect slopes curves and diagonals therefore one of your first obstacles to overcome is understanding how to recreate these rather awkward forms in our block game I’ll cover some tools

That can help you with this later but early on you should play around with making Circles by hand especially those with odd number diameters make good use of the non full blocks such as walls trap doors and fence gings once you understand circles you essentially unlock curves and

Arches another limitation when it comes to Minecraft this color while there is indeed an incredible range of available textures not all colors have the array of shapes given by those such as the woods and Stones seriously Mojang where my balloon ever breaks one way that we can fill in some

Of these color gaps is by using a technique called glass shading simply placing a glass block or pane over another Block in order to slightly alter Hue this can be incredibly useful for those tricky gradient Transitions and while we’re on the topic of glass panes these make excellent colored shaping

Blocks if you you think about them a bit like vertical slaps a basic limitation to be aware of is the world height limit in a void world you have 384 blocks available to use it’s likely not something that you’ll have to worry about when you’re starting out but it is a game mechanic

So I thought it was worth mentioning when I was learning how to build I watched a lot of tutorials so the fact that you’ve made it here is a great sign good job following a block for Block tutorial will allow you to pick up a few

Techniques but in my opinion it’s not a valuable way of learning how to build for your myself and this is why I tend to present my own tutorials more as methodology guides an important skill to master early on is the ability to work from a reference essentially it’s a

Substitution you can worry less about composition and shaping because well the artist has already done that hard work for you but you have to put more effort into recreating the details and textures in a new medium lately I’ve been using Pinterest to find some inspiration and I’ll show some comparisons of my builds

Against the images that I was working off of depending on what you’re building you’ll either want to recreate the reference or to put your own creative spin on the concept it’s a fun challenge to transfer the shapes and colors into our block game you can also of course reference other Builder Creations just

Be super mindful of any plagiarism unintentional or otherwise remember that you’re likely to learn less if you straight up copy someone else’s Micra project all right let’s actually start building since that’s where you’re here here’s a flat wall but it’s rather Bland so let’s take a look at a few texturing

T techniques texturing boils down to introducing block variation since Minecraft blocks already have their own textures when building we applying texture on the macro level mostly by varying color I use this handy image that I’m calling my omnidirectional gradient color wheel to find blocks of similar colors and this image is pinned

On my Instagram profile if you’d like to take a closer look please follow for my first example I’ll simply take a couple extra blocks from the same color group and randomly replace sections of the wall this is obviously an improvement but it can look quite messy overall more

Evidently at a larger scale therefore another way to texture is to group your blocks together more and have more clear transitions between different blocks this method is particularly effective for Rubes and larger walls where you might apply a gradient in a certain direction additionally this technique

Can be used to emphasize areas in Shadow by moving towards slightly darker blocks where you want the build to appear darker another example is to introduce grimy texturing where you could imagine that water is and dripping down a wall over time great for abandoned or dystopian style builds you can achieve

This by adding a gradient that is more dark or brown or green and this method can be utilized alongside other texturing techniques as well we’ve also got patterns texturing wherein you apply a regularly repeating design in order to punctuate geometric shapes like these pillars or equally to diver VI a

Gradient Pro tip don’t use Hue blocks for your gradients next I’ll touch on detailing I would Define detailing in Minecraft as using the non full blocks to improve shaping and intricacy on the micro level I usually approach detailing towards the end of a build once I’ve got the major shaping down with full

Blocks don’t be afraid to use functional blocks as decorative ones candles can be candles but they can also be spray cans handlebars Aerials and leaves fence gates can go in a fence but they can also go in roof under hangs tree branches and star fighter gun barrels I

Could go on but you get the idea thinking outside the box while keeping your designs recognizable is a key skill that you’ll develop over time you can also use the debug stick to get some crazy details although this obviously prevents the creation from being survival friendly it’s definitely fun to

Play around with it though especially when combined with a model plugin that prevents block updates because it simply allows you to reach a whole new level of detail I’ve shown this color wheel already but I think that it’s a really handy tool and I do use it all the time

Obviously it’s not perfect as it lacks a lot of monochromatic gradients such as this one color theory is a useful concept to be aware of if you’re looking to use Minecraft as an art form but honestly I’m not an expert in this department generally warm colors such as red orange

And yellow are rather intense and great for highlights on the other hand cool colors such as green blue and purple are more tame and natural having a balance of these is something to consider but it’s not always going to be applicable to what you’re working on in terms of

Making your creation look visually appealing Builders sometimes use shaders this Strays slightly from vanilla since you can heavily alter aspects like saturation and Sky color but the positive impact on presentability makes it widely acceptable to take a good screenshot get the sun behind you and turn that field of view right down some

Builders like to use texture packs however personally I enjoy the challenge of working with what the game has given us you can also learn rendering which is a lengthy yet rewarding AAL in terms of composition there are many interesting ideas like the rule of fs and offc centering that you can research

I think that it’s also great when your screenshot tells a story as it engages the viewer for example here’s a pretty cool xwing but here’s a swampy X-Wing getting lifted out of the water by a Jedi seems a bit more interesting right after working with a bunch of different

Creators I can confirm that everyone has a process some people like to jump straight in with the shaping While others will study a reference whilst meticulously arranging several block pets both approaches are perfectly okay and you’ll gradually establish your own workflow as you continue to build once

You found a process that works for you try to stick to that system my number one tip would be to just practice you’ll hear this a lot but it’s true put some hours in if you’re not completely sure on how to go about something just give

It a go you can always improve it later or blow it all up and try again with more knowledge than before for me the hardest part of a build can be placing the first block from there the creativity starts to flow and the idea starts to materialize after after all these years

I have a sort of intuition when it comes to building because I’m aware of all the different techniques and Concepts at my disposal and how I can apply them in the best possible way that is something that will only come with time the most well-known building mod is

World edit a fundamental tool for Creative efficiency commands like stack move copy paste rotate flip and replace allow you to instantly complete tasks that would otherwise take hours of done by hand there’s a range of useful masks brushes and masks for brushes which when mastered will streamline your process I

Have a complete guide to world edit on my channel but please don’t watch it now watch it after this one four not to be confused with the number of iral friends that I have is build speak for fast async world edit I know that some people pronounce it FY

But that would have ruin the joke it’s the plug-in version of worldedit which means that it can be used on servers that have it installed it comes with a fair few extra features and runs a lot more smoothly with world edit comes a rabbit hole of mathematically terrifying

Commands via SL generate and there’s a handy 125 page guide for that if you’re interested Linked In the description axium is a relatively new mod set to take over the single player creative building space with numerous quality of life additions including hot bar swapping fly speed toggling force

Placing fast braking and block chiseling it also comes with an incredibly comprehensive editor UI which after You’ spent a week getting used to the camera Controls will allow you to play around with blueprint shapes smoothing text height mapping and noise passing texturing to name but a few features you can even undo any mistakes with control Z Axiom does have a plug-in version however currently in my opinion it is outclassed by the other building plugins

Available this could for sure change in the future though voxal sniper is a building plugin that brings even more brushes to the table simply specify the material and brush shape then adjust the brush size intensity and other parameters meta brushes is a premium plugin that uses

Vxo sniper as its base this adds even more brushes that are pretty meta for landscaping see what I did there go brush another building plugin is a h map terraforming tool it comes with a snazzy menu access via the Flint item in here we can change the height Map size

Intensity Direction up or down and toggle a flattening mode you can even add custom height Maps then we’ve got Go Pain an excellent tool for you guess it painting the menu lives in the fever from here we can adjust the block we’re painting with and on as well as the size

There are also a few brushes including a default sphere a splatter brush an angle masker and a gradient Placer this plug-in isn’t super necessary because most of these brush es can be replicated in four however it is a lot more simple so I’d recommend using it if you’re just

Starting out and finally we have Aron an incredibly powerful plugin you can replace by color make spikes and generate large scale Terrain in seconds it also lets you replace entire block types with one command form completely customizable borders and make use of probably the best command ever oft and

Again that’s just scratching the surface Aron and meta brushes are unfortunately payward but you can use them for free on public creative building servers such as the bakery you can join their Discord to learn more link below Minecraft building can be broken down into three major categories we’ve

Got structures which are all the types of buildings terrain which is all about Landscapes and finally Organics which are usually upscaled creatures or humanoid figures note that this categorization is subjective vehicles for example tend to have organic shapes but can also have structural interior IAS and trees despite being organic in

Nature can be major components of terrain in terms of structures Builders like to further categorize them into building styles these can be defined as a set of characteristic features from a certain time period region or genre or mirror real life architectural styles styles can be as broad as medieval or as

Narrow and detailed as modern ecob brutalist or dystopian cyberpunk Oriental some people will dox you for inaccurately defining medieval though so do be careful out there once you decided on your style you might find it best to start with a plan you might want to lay down some pallets for different sections

For example one for the wall gradient one for the roof gradient and one for the trim and detail blocks if you’re building from a reference like discussed before you’ll need to choose a scale to build at for structures the easiest way to do this is to scale off of the front

Door or a window my planning typically involves laying down an outline along the ground but sometimes I go straight into boxing out the shapes typically I stick to odd-numbered whips so that I have one wi Center Roes and circles avoiding a single rectangle your base shape is key working up from a more

Complex base will lead to a more complex and hopefully more aesthetically pleasing structure you can even make walls along the 45° angle for an extra challenge then I’ll move on to shaping this just means blocking out the walls and spending some time getting the rubs looking fancy I would stick to just a

Handful of blocks so that you can worry about proper texturing later on staircase rubs can look a bit boring so you might want to experiment with sharper angles curves domes and Cones or to break up these shapes with Dormer spir and chimneys with your flat walls you can push back sections to create

Some depth generating more space to detail later with multiple stories you can play with overhangs porches and balconies in order to introduce some height variation perhaps having roofs start and end at different levels and taking advantage of a complex base shape once you’re happy with the overall shape

Of the structure it’s texturing time this is an opportunity to apply the techniques discussed earlier a a flat wall or roof can be made more interesting with a fun gradient and with that you can think about shadows and shading Pro tip you can save your favorite gradients as hot bars in the

Creative menu pattern texturing could be used to highlight your shapes maybe something as simple as this corner brick work texture if the theme permits it work in some green or brown for some wear and tear be sure to utilize unique textures wherever possible the back of the blast furnace is great for sci-fi

Whilst the barrel fits perfectly in a medieval beam done with texturing now we can detail the structure and yes that includes the back your roofs and windows are going to want a nice trim and a contrast and color to emphasize their shapes the roof itself might need some

Smoothing out add some Greenery hanging lights roof Toppers big signs supports essentially anything that isn’t a full block is fair game throw in your open fence skates campfires Le turns and trap doors however there is certainly a balance for your detailing too much and you hide your excellent texturing behind

A clunky mess but too little in your build like life and of course I’ve laid out my process in this order but your workflow might not follow it completely and that’s okay it might make more sense to run through the whole process in one area before moving on to the next or to

Add some details before the texturing so that you know it will look nice in the end now the average structure Builder seems to fear interiors and yet they already possess the fundamental skills necessary to do a great job introduce depth to the walls and ceilings experiment with details and use clever

Texturing there’s a rather unique opportunity to play with the bottom textures of certain blocks such as the loom think about what objects might belong in a given room and then attempt to recreate them in game scattering turtle eggs and sea pickles around can look really good for some reason so when

In doubt you can always try that to start an organic I think that it’s really important to use a reference simply because of how tricky the shapes can get when modeling animals if you get the ratios and proportions of the body parts wrong it’s usually easy for the

Average person to tell just by eye finding a 3D model online can be really useful when you need to look at multiple angles no joke this was me when figuring out my light Cruiser so there are a couple ways that you can go about the actual shaping number one is wire framing

Usually done by hand you could also call this outlining in 3D the best way to demonstrate this is via an example so here’s the ights of me wiring this Dragon Scar and here’s the reference that I was using as you can see I use different colored lines to map out the

Different shapes on the image and then use the same color W blocks in game another method is using commands for a larger project organic Builders will use a lot of ox or sniper brushes starting with the ball brush and then using the blend ball and meta brush is

Metable to smooth everything out Aron’s loft is a great tool for quickly making cloth wings or sails it’s actually what I use for these dragon wings of course it’s still important to perfect your shaping by hand using these commands makes your building more efficient but it doesn’t take away from the skill of

The creation gener generally try to avoid staircasing because it can look too blocky and also to avoid singular hanging blocks like this in terms of scale the larger you build the easier it becomes to detail but the more time you have to put in texturing Organics tends

To be very gradient based especially on the large scale on the smaller scale detailing becomes very important in order to recreate intricate shapes oh and don’t forget about using glass shading and shaping all right terrain time if you’re terraforming by hand the best approach is probably the wire framing technique

That I went over earlier but building by hand is cringe so let’s see what commands we can use I’ll start by saying that I already have a couple tutorials on different Advanced train techniques which you can watch after this one for shaping we have the whole of the

G brush plugin to work with meta brush’s angled Cliff which is super useful and Aron’s AR Boulder Aron’s love can also be used for Cliffs as well as for Rivers if you master air and use the def flag which makes it Stack Down to the floor Aron’s teren is an insane command which

Generates a re region of terrain given a certain noise passing and there are lot of noise passings to choose from heren works with all of the levels of water and both Loft and teren work half slabs you can texture your terrain by angle through noise patterns via mask

Into adjacent blocks or a mixture of these personally I like to replace the angles between 0 and 50° in we grass and then to apply a funky noise pth into the remaining Rock I would love to cover this in more detail but this video is getting pretty long so you can always

Check out my other tutorials when you have the time unless you’re building Mars your terrain is going to look pretty baren about some trees for your trees start thicker the roots and then get narrower towards the middle then open out again with branches smooth out your trunk with shaping blocks making

Sure that the colors match up and then use fences and fence gates for the branches my number one tip for the leaves is to include more air gaps than you think that you’ll need because that makes it look more bushy and realistic if you’re making a giant tree

Definitely think of it more as an organic and go for the box or sniper brushes room or use Aron Spike command for the leaves you can op for a sphere brush of mostly air or alternatively you can build a few giant Leaf assets and paste them around the branches if you’re

Making a dead tree really focus on the detailing of the branches because they won’t be covered by leaves obviously cuz it’s it’s dead try to keep a positive mentality when attempting building I get really really upset when I read people saying I’ll never be that good when they see an

Awesome creation if you set yourself up for failure like that then it’s true you’ll simply never improve instead when looking at a build that’s above your caliber so to speak try to think about what techniques have been used to make it look good you’ll certainly recognize at least one thing that I’ve talked

About today or I’ve done a terrible job staying motivated to keep building can understandably be difficult there’s a surprisingly steep learning curve and getting good simply won’t happen overnight not to get philosophical but like with everything in life if you set your mind to it apply yourself in

Practice you will improve and seeing that Improvement should hopefully be the motivation that you need as a Creator all of your lovely comments are enough to keep me going and I’m really indebted to you guys for that so perhaps posting your own Creations could be a motivator you could join my

Community Discord server in post there I think that’ll be fitting to round off this video with a hyper analysis of one of my own builds I’ve chosen this small scale organic named ibol tree because it’s one of my more popular Creations for my Instagram your first thought

Might be wow Tom you’re so creative how did you come up with that and the answer is easy I this guy did here’s my reference I think the real skill demonstrated here is how I was able to transfer this idea into Minecraft so I’ll go through some of the

Techniques that I used for the base shape I used well it to form a nice Sphere for the eyeball next I had a look at the reference and started texturing the iris in pupil I used a lot of light blue glazed terra cotta because it was perfect for recreating the lines found

In the iris to replicate the white highlights on the eye I used white blocks detail with an iron trap door and some glass shading then I needed a white the red gradient so I studied my color wheel making good use of the new Cherry blocks these red veins may look rather

Complicated but it’s really just spamming all of the mangar detail blocks together making sure that everything stays connected and gets thicker towards the top I even threw in some red candles for extra detail as the veins became Roots I needed a new gradient to transition from red to Brown which I

Accomplished through Brown Wall the trunk itself is a semicircle I mentioned at the start of the video that learning how to make circles is a really useful skill and here’s an example of that I layered this curb and then texted it with brown blocks mostly from the spruce

Family detailing with open fence skates mushrooms on podsol and brown candles as for the branches this is a technique that I use all the time for making trees covered in my first ever tutorial I branched out with fences and fence gates then used a worlded sphere brush mostly

Composed of air to paint in the leaves after replacing the blocks with various green ones I replace the air above the Moss blocks with grass and the air below them with cites analyzing builds like this is something that I would love to continue as its own Series so let me know if

You’d be interested in that I could talk about what makes a build good for a scary amount of time and it would be interesting to go over other people’s builds as well my satisfying time lapses are Splendid but they often don’t quite reveal the planning process and many

Challenges overcome to reach a finished product therefore I hope this video has been useful tackling all of building in one video was never going to be easy and it certainly could never cover everything but if you learned just one thing I i’ appreciate a sub stick around

For the bloopers and share this with a friend whom you think might benefit from it all build downloads are on my patreon thank you so much for watching note that this category Cate C categorization for who invented that the best way to demonstrate this is via

An example so here’s the timelapse of me wiring wiring framing why I that will study a reference whilst meticulously meticulously God pea Pig