Art Roofing In Minecraft

I recently got back into modeling due to school being done and the pandemic and all. As I was thinking about cool possible additions to the game, I thought why not roofing? Currently you can only go down to the half block vertically (vertical slabs when Mojang!), so you can't really make realistic nor detailed roofs down to the player's scale.

After looking through some mods, I was stuck on what kind of roofing I wanted to model. Specifically, if I wanted the roofing to be flat or to be made up of individual steps. For example, YouTuber TrixyBlox used the Chisel and Bits mod to make a super detailed cabin and I loved how the roof looked (I'd skip towards the end):

As you can see the roof is made up of individual 16x16x16 pixels. This style is appealing because it makes the game feel consistent with its retro theme.

Whereas Macaw's Roof Mod uses whole slanted blocks instead to have a smooth surface.

While I do like how the roof windows look, I do not like the Steep 1:2 and the Lower 2:1 and especially the corner pieces. Some things like rails are better to make flat while diagonal because otherwise they look too bumpy. And since Minecraft is a 3D environment it can get away with it better than a 2D pixel game. But then you have mods like the Lycanites Mobs that take this to the 10th degree and completely disregard Minecraft's retro style:
https://lycanitesmobs.com/creature
The designs are cool, but they don't mesh well with the rest of the game at all and belong in a PS1 game instead. The way how the pixels mash and stretch together make all the mobs look ugly and hard to look at in a way that traditional pixel art never can be.

So at first I decided to go with individual steps to create a diagonal and went with a traditional slate roof. The space is made up of 32x32x32 pixels (i.e. modeling after a 32x32x32 texture pack) and each quadrant represents 1/8th of the volume of a block.


Along with some slab versions to add more variety:



Like stairs, roofing blocks would connect together at corners. Including the slab-versions with the regular versions. You could also place a block underneath them to get rid of any space inbetween.


But then I wanted to do terracotta roofing and things got really tricky. You can't model the individual tiles of terracotta roofing while doing individual steps because it's too bumpy:



Therefore, I decided to do a smooth surface instead and I like the results better:


So now I'm stumped at which style is better. That's why I want to know what you all think and if there could be any improvements to my models or the concept in general. And if you would like to see roofing added to Minecraft as well.

 

These models look great! I'd agree this would be a nice addition to the game, it'd work very nicely for most small houses. Most of Wynn would look much better with more realistic roofs.

On the more angled surface, perhaps the tiles would be more visible if each tile was 2 (cubes? voxels? blocks?) wide rather than just one? Though that would probably defeat the purpose of a 45 degree angle.

 

I couldn't have a step be 2 voxels wide while still having a 45 degree angle. Otherwise it would be as tall as a slab.

On another note, do you prefer a space inbetween each terracotta tile or with no space?

 

I think the no space version looks a bit better.