Any building tips?

[BIG mac]

I suck at building stuff. The way I usually have fun in modded minecraft, since my buildings are about as aesthetically pleasing as turds, is I usually try to be an engineer and make crazy automated setups to do random stuff, but I really want to make a cool base to put crazy automated machines in.

I usually look at google images to get some inspiration, then try to sort of replicate what I see in a picture. Usually when I'm about half way done, I tear it down because it doesn't look good at all.

I can usually make descent castles using circle guides for my towers, and I can make nice small houses, but when it comes to making big factory buildings, about all I can accomplish is a glorified stone cube.

I have no artistic ability and can't really visualize what I want my projects to look like very well, so I was wondering if you guys have any good tips for building stuff, because I'm tired of my buildings looking like crap.

 

[Darva]

I'm not much of a builder either... But i found this quite helpful.

(This old 9x9 by Saice) There's 2 episodes, in 4 parts. I'm waiting semi-patiently for him to add more. *laughs*

 

[zenkmander]

Right there with ya. To compensate for my lack of creativity, I try to build my boring structures into the environment. My current base was built into the side of a cliff, so even though the base itself is ugly, it looks decent since it's surrounded by the natural worldgen. Very dwarven.

If I flattened the environment first, it'd just be a huge box.

 

[Tristam Izumi]

I've been slowly using http://sarlacminecraft.imgur.com/ as inspiration. I'm still a very long way off from making my structures anywhere as aesthetic as those, but I'm a lot better than I used to be (not that that is very hard).

 

[fortmeadow]

i just let the filler from bc build everything for me hahaha i take the easy way out i guess

 

[PierceSG]

Combine lots of 9x9 together, it will look like...something. Eventually.

 

[fortmeadow]

yeah thats how my first base usually starts or dig into the side of a cliff

 

[Dark0_0firE]

I've been slowly using http://sarlacminecraft.imgur.com/ as inspiration. I'm still a very long way off from making my structures anywhere as aesthetic as those, but I'm a lot better than I used to be (not that that is very hard).

Man lookin at that person's builds... makes me want to either get to trying it... or go sit in a corner and cry.

 

[Esheon]

Well, I'm not the best builder in the world, but you can make a box look more interesting by adding texture & color differences. If your building is made of one material, add columns of a different material at the corners and between the windows. For example...

At the corner of a wall, put a column of a contrasting material (I like using vertical logs).
On either side of that column put a vertical row of upside-down stairs, using the same (or a similar) material as the wall. (I wish we had vanilla stone stairs that were not cobblestone.)
On a window made of panes, put stairs above and below the window to frame it. Or, with microblocks you can surround a window with a frame different from the wall material.
If you're going for a "ruined" look, make a wall of stone brick. Then, knock out random sections & replace them with cracked stone brick, smooth stone, and cobblestone, leaving some block out at the top... just make sure it looks random.

As soon as I get to my computer (probably be a while), I'll post a pic or two. It's nothing like sarlaccminecraft up there, but it works.

 

[Redius]

Pro Tip: learn to love stairs; pair an upside down one with a regular one, to form an indent in the wall...the key to building in minecraft is variation in field depth. Since your ability to manipulate shapes is somewhat limited by being constrained to blocks, you can fool depth perception with indents and outward jutting features (fenceposts work well for this, as do microblocks).

 

[BeastFeeder]

You could watch youtubers for inspiration and change materials, colors, layouts, or biomes to make it "your own".

The mindcrack guys frequently show how they build things and have good inspiration. Etho's floating islands from his FTB series was pretty impressive, but many of them inspire me.

 

[Esheon]

Here we go (sooner than I thought).

Like I said, I'm not the best builder out there... but I think I do well enough.

Tech World 2 basement outside...

Spoiler

Ignore the top, I'm still working on it. I'm probably going to either lower the deck by one block, or get rid of that corner of the 2nd floor entirely, I haven't decided. The texture pack is Soartex Fanver, I just used their patcher to get most of the mods added in.

From left to right, it's Spruce log, cobble stairs, cobblestone, doorway (with a fence gate instead of a door, keeps zombies out), cobblestone, window with cobble stairs on top and bottom, cobblestone, cobble stairs, spruce log, cobble stairs, cobblestone, window with cobble stairs, cobblestone, cobble stairs, spruce log.

It's mostly cobblestone, but it's broken up enough that it looks less like a box.

Some floors from the same building...

Spoiler

The wood on the floors is all birch. The left-hand design is furnaces and workbenches. The center is a checkerboard of sandstone and fancy sandstone bricks. The right is sandstone and smooth stone slabs. One of the reasons I almost always use birch for flooring is it goes well with sandstone. It also provides a good contrast to my usually-spruce walls.

And a Magic World 2 tower

Spoiler

This one was on a different computer, so I had to recreate it in creative. The full version goes up two more stories, with the second story as a glass dome with smooth stone slabs for supports that narrows the tower to a 5-square-radius "circle", which continues for the top floor & has an observation deck on top. That was way to complicated for me to duplicate from memory, so I just did the bottom floor outside.

This one is just a circle made of sandstone bricks with smooth stone slabs at the "corners". The deck (and inside floor, though I didn't put it in for this pic) are acacia wood slabs. The windows are glass blocks. Unfortunately, the sandstone bricks in MW2 don't have a "stairs" version, so no breaks above and below the windows. The sandstone brick goes very well with acacia wood, so IMO it makes up for the missing special blocks. The accent block over the door is a piece of circle stone.

And just a random wall (Tech World 2)...

Spoiler

LOL, I just noticed I forgot to put one of the windows in. Well, maybe there's a tall machine on the other side of that wall section.

The support columns that stick out from the wall are made with fancy polished stone brick microblocks. The lining around the windows is fancy stone brick, the flush column between the two right-hand windows is polished stone brick, and the windows themselves are stained glass. Now that I'm looking at it in a screenshot, I think I'd use stone brick stairs above and below the windows instead of the fancy stone brick.

This could work as an outside wall for a factory, or if you wanted less "fancy" you could use more common blocks. Maybe just plain stone brick around the windows, smooth stone slabs for the line between the windows, and polished stone bricks for the external columns.

I watch a lot of the youtubers (mostly mindcrackers) as well. Generikb has been building an amazing haunted southern plantation (he builds it straight first, then "hauntifies" it). Bdoubleo100 did a very nice-looking "modern" style house, and he's currently working on a sort-of-Mayan temple in the jungle that he's going to turn into a mini-adventure for PaulSoaresJr to play through. It's been interesting watching through the "Building with Bdoubleo" series and seeing how he changes and improves his technique over time.

 

[TheAbstractHippo]

Sometimes the problem people have with building is that they just start building without thinking. Believe me, sometimes that is good but you need to at least have a color scheme. Pick some colors that look good (for instance, black, white, and burgundy) and THEN you can start building randomly, because then you'll know what will make it look better.