#building tutorial

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When I have an idea for a build, like the cathedral I built, I usually start by looking for the biome that it's built in in a survival world. Now because the build that I did was on an SMP with my friends, I really couldn't get the seed to experiment in the original place in a test world, but if you are able to get the seed and build right in the spot that your build is going to be, that would be highly recommended.

When I did this first step, I made a brand new world with a random seed and found a snowy tundra biome to build in. A little sneak peek of my build world, without looking at the builds, you can see that I found a relatively small snowy tundra biome, but it still works out in my favor.

But regardless, once I get my location, getting a general block palette that I can use as some kind of gradient in parts of the build is usually the next step for me. A REALLY useful resource that helped me out a lot was Grian's "One trick to change the way you build in Minecraft" video, which covers a lot of very useful gradients and how they work.

But I wanted to decide on what blocks to use, and thinking about historical accuracy in this build, I remembered that back in the 13th century, most likely what would have been used was stone bricks made by stonemasons at the time, which was my main inspiration for using the stone, andesite, and polished andesite. But when the build got lower to the ground, I noticed that I needed to have a white block on the bottom, to not only blend into the snow, but to signify the weather's impact on the build.

When I made this build, I was also using mods, one of which was the mod "O' The Biomes You'll Go" (This build was made in 1.16.5, OTBYG is not updated to 1.17 yet ;n;), so you'll see a different block mixed into the diorite, which is a block called Dacite, which in the modpack is typically only seen in the Dover Hills biome.

But I am usually a fan of getting a color pallette that shows "Hey, the environment is having an impact on this cathedral, the snow is sticking to the lower bits of the cathedral because it's so close to the ice", or something along those lines. Having that usually ties it to the actual environment so much better than usual.

Either way, once i get the pallette down, I usually go for the general shape of the front of the build in my creative world, building with a filler block first, like stone or dacite to signify that there will be a difference in materials, etc etc. This step catches me using a lot of references that I'd like to use, and this cathedral's front specifically was heavily based off of the Siena Cathedral, in siena, italy.

When I was making this build, as well, I really wanted this to be a cathedral made specifically for pride month, having representation for as many pride flags as I could muster, and that turned out having me spend a lot of time bouncing ideas off of my friends, and trying to make windows in the cathedral that represented each part of the LGBTQIA+. If you were the person that I bounced these ideas off of, you would have seen like, twenty screenshots, each with a "is this alright?" overtop of it.

In my building world, I drafted out windows for the cathedral, having (from left to right) the Lesbian flag, the Xenogender Flag, the Asexual Flag, the Intersex Flag, the Queer Flag, the Bisexual Flag, the MLM Flag, and lastly the Transgender flag. These went through a lot of iterations, where I would run these designs by my friends that knew a lot about pride flags.

After I got the pride flags, and the front of the cathedral, and the general pallette, I mostly drove to improvising the rest of the build, deciding that on the inside, the ceiling should replicate the old domed ceilings commonly found in cathedrals of the time, and deciding that the best way to light up the top parts of the archways that frame the stained glass was to make some chandeliers.

Where there is one seemingly random piece of the interior, it was made out of necessity. The chandeliers were made to light up the upper parts of the build, the archways were made to separate the main walk with the sides, and to frame the windows, and the red carpet was to hid lighting underneath it.

In the end, the most important thing I would say to do is to make sure that you have fun doing it. If I didnt have fun building this cathedral, I wouldn't have built it. This was also after building two cathedrals in the past.

One of the main reasons why I built this cathedral was because I built two in the past, and I felt like it was necessary to get an idea of how much I've improved since I first built one in 2016.

This was back in 2016

This was in January 2021 or so

And this was today!

We start off with our good old square box. Simple, but boring.

Using some of the tips/tricks in my other tutorial, I’ve narrowed it out and added a lean to. It’s looking so much better already! But now this place needs a yard!

I decided to go with creating a home for a family of poulterers first. For this tutorial I’m going to do a few parts, just to show how one lot can change easily, but the only in-depth one I’m doing will be for my humble chicken farmers. But what is this, a basic square fencing just outlining the barrier? We can do much better than that.

I brought the edges in, giving us a much cozier yard. Cutting off the corners and splitting the yard in to three also gives it a much more interesting look.

I also added an outhouse, just for some variety in the separate structures.

Next we need to decorate a little. I picked out a basic palette of plants. Three different trees, some low grasses and bushes. You don’t want to use a crazy variety because it won’t look as natural.

This was just with the trees and exterior walls.

You’ll see I used a tree covered in flowers for the yard. It’s a little detail, but it’s something that a family might keep because it was pretty. For the terrain paint I made paths from all gates and doors, then filled in the area that will be a garden and the area that will be used for the chickens.