[guide] Making A Minecraft Render In Blender

As many of you know, the Your-Work section keeps getting less and less Renders.
This is something I have always wanted to avoid, unfortunately, it happened.
That's why I am making this thread for you guys, to teach you how to make your own Minecraft scene and hopefully bring the Render section back to life.
My reason for rendering was because of the great wallpapers I kept finding, and I couldn't wait to make my own. By the way, if you have questions, ask them in the comments, i'll update the thread afterwards.

If anyone has no scroll wheel, you will need one. It is important because you need it to toggle the view.

I will now give you the essential download links:
Mineways: http://www.realtimerendering.com/erich/minecraft/public/mineways/
Blender: https://www.blender.org/download/
Minecraft Rig: No download link. The rig you want to use is up to you. But I recommend you to use Rymndnisse's rig

Let us start with the basics of Blender:

Spoiler: Introduction to Blender

As I said, you will need a scrollbar, because there is an important button, the middle mouse button. Click it by clicking your scrollbar.
So, let us take a look at the Blender interface (close the first window by left clicking next to it)


Now delete everything you see by pressing [A] multiple times until everything is orange, now press [X] and delete.

For (probably) every 3D software there is the actual program and a rendering engine, I want you to turn the engine from Blender Render to Cycles Render. (it is at the top bar if you can't find it)

Toggle the view by scrolling, holding the middle mouse button or holding [SHIFT] or [CTRL] and the middle mouse button.
Adding objects from the rig to the scene can be done with File -> Append.
Move objects by right clicking the object (SHIFT + right click other objects to combine) and moving the mouse.

When building a regular scene, there are 4 steps to do that:
1. Modeling
2. Texturing
3. Lighting
4. Compositing

Spoiler: Importing a Minecraft world Using Mineways

When you downloaded the .zip file and opened mineways.exe you should now see a little window.
Proceed to open your minecraft world with File -> Open World -> (world)
Set the lower depth to about 40-50 if you don't want to include the caves. Less if you do want to include caves.
You may now Right click to select the part you want to import (say no when theres an incoming message)
and Left click to toggle the view.

Now, you need to import the textures that we need (you can also use a different resource pack if you want.)
Here is the 1.8 minecraft terrain file, drag it on your desktop


Go to File -> Set Terrain file and apply the texture.
Now go to File -> Import for Rendering and select a new folder to put the files in
Now name the file and set the file type to "Wavefront OBJ, relative (*.obj)"

You now have the minecraft world as an .obj file, go back to blender and import it.
File -> Import -> Wavefront (.obj) and select the file (name).obj

Spoiler: Applying the texture to our model

Select any object. any.
Now go into the node editor, by clicking this cube in the lower left corner

Check the box "Use nodes" and copy this node setup, please note that everything needs to look EXACTLY like this [besides the name 'volcano'] (add nodes by looking through the "Add" section)


Go to the materials panel located on your right by clicking this icon:

A little bit below this icon there should be a +, below a -, and below this there should be this symbol: ▼
click this triangle and click: "Copy material to others".

Spoiler: Lighting

The lightning section is up to you. Add light sources with [SHIFT] + [A] -> lamps. Or use objects that emit light (use nodes and use an Emission shader), some that are not visible to the viewer but illuminate the scene.
The environment panel is located at the same bar as the materials panel, it's the blue planet, Use nodes for that and for the background select a Sky texture.

Spoiler: Final step: camera/rendering settings

Add a camera with [SHIFT] + [A] -> Camera and locate it where you want it to be. move it with [G], rotate it with [R], move it on specific axes by pressing [x], [y] or [z]

This is the step that you need to follow when you really know you are done. Expect long rendering times.
Go to the rendering panel (it's the camera icon in the panel bar)
and in the Dimensions section, turn the 50% you see up to 100%, change the rendering presents to HD 1080p (what i prefer)
go to the Sampling section and turn the "Render" samples from 10 up to ~900 (the higher this value is the longer it takes to render)

I hope I haven't forgotten anything. Advanced tips may be found in the comments.
Questions will be answered.
This was everything you need to know about importing a minecraft scene.

ADDITIONS:

Spoiler: Using Rigs

To add containing objects in rigs, go to File -> Append -> (yout rig).blend -> Object and then select any object.
Move these around with G, scale it with S, and rotate it with R.

Working with mobs
Select your mob with its bone structure, the object file should say e.g Horse_bones or sometimes Horse_armature, select this kind of file with the actual Horse by holding the shift button and left clicking both objects.
Continue to selecting (right clicking) the bones and switch from Object Mode to Pose Mode

Now you can change the pose of your mob and (if aviable) change settings for the character rig (eyes, eyebrows etc.)

 

Is there a video guide for this?

 

I'm not sure if there are youtube videos that explain it that exactly but there might be

 

Nice guide! Maybe I'll try it out someday. However, an explanation how to use rigs is missing and the scrollbar should be renamed to scrollwheel. With this guide as it is, I would only be able to render a part of my minecraft world, so in the end I could just take a screenshot instead.

 

I'll mark a memo for this, the guide for this will appear here or above soon

 

how do you get the rigs, or are they already input into the blender program for you. im planning on trying it out but havent tested it yet

 

Download it, as I said, I recommend you to google "rymdnisse rig" (since I am not allowed to show the link in the thread from what ive heard)
so once you downloaded that you can now append these files in blender by putting them on your desktop or whereever you like them to be

 

Please help me my mouse click doesn't work. Only my scroll.

Edit: And there is no "Use Nodes" button.

 

not sure about the mouse but the use nodes thing may not actually be called that. Try looking for a YouTube tutorial for your blender version. This tutorial helps but I think a visual representation would probably help you a bit more(atleast in finding the nodes button)

 

I didn't learn how to make a render from this thread, but it helped me get more into cycles and nodes. I'm trying more nodes combinations.


By the way, you should mention that by pressing numberpad0 you can switch to camera view, and then press NN, and check the 'lock camera to view' mode. It's much easier too locate the camera, because you can see what the camera sees

 

gonna try right away

 

Bump! Da bump!

 

I don't see an "Image Texture" node option, only a "Texture" node with a GUI very different from yours. Has blender changed since this guide? What do I do?

 

Then I was using the Blender version v2.75, you are probably using v2.77, if you already have version 2.75 try again using the node editor and saying "Add -> Texture -> Image Texture"
If you still have the problem send me a picture of your view

 

I figured it out, I wasn't using "Cycles" and I just had to drag and drop the texture into the node area.

Now, however, I'd like to know how to make lava glow and emit light. When I select it on the right and change the shader to "emission", it changes all the object's shaders to "emission." I want to change only lava.

I've literally never used blender before today and I have no clue what I'm doing of if it even makes sense, so your help is very appreciated :)

 

go back to the step where you have to let something emit light, adding emission will affect every other material since you have copied material to others,
this is how you let single objects glow:
1. select the object,
2. add a new material slot

3. delete the slot being above the one you just added

now you can build the original node setup with emission nodes

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Sorry, there is a much shorter way than I have just explained:
so select the object you want to emit light and look at the materials panel at this bar:

if you click the "+" you will give the object its own material. and yea, have fun letting things glow

 

My lava just isn't glowing. I tried the second method inadvertently first, then figured out how to do what you said first, but neither worked. I would post images to show you but I can't yet.

I set the emission color to something reddish and the strength really high (like 500) and it just sits there when I render it.. not glowing.

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Wait.. I think I got it working by using the "Add Shader" node after the emission node. The lava seems to emit light now, but it doesn't have a texture. Let me fiddle some more.

 

this is another theme, its called compositing, I have to make another thread today hopefully to explain other renderers

 

How do we make these?

 

you don't, you find them in %appdata%