9. Custom Creations, Part 1

What You’ll Be Doing

Watch Coolcrafter10 go to the ocean for a surprise

Create objects that you can’t find on Thingiverse

Work with shapes and groups of shapes

Coolcrafter10 and Didgee sat on a couch, taking turns looking through the 3D viewer at the various 3D image cards they had created using PackRat’s instructions. On the other side of the room, Prism sat at her laptop and smiled at a video of their castle as it rotated around, giving her a 360-degree view of their home.

“This is amazing,” said Didgee. “Now we can take along these 3D image cards when we visit our friends and show them our designs. They’ll be able to see our creations as if they were actually standing right in front of them.”

PackRat nodded and smiled, “It was a nice surprise to see it worked. I honestly didn’t know if the 3D effect would be good or bad.”

“Oh, it’s good,” said Coolcrafter10, holding up a card and staring at it with the 3D viewer. “This tree looks much closer than the castle behind it. And the clouds disappear into the distance.”

Prism laughed out loud, and everyone looked over at her. “I can zoom in and out and fly up above this 3D model of the waterfall behind the castle. You really outdid yourself with this project, PackRat.”

Coolcrafter10 and Didgee nodded in agreement.

“Thank you,” said PackRat. “But Didgee, you haven’t seen Prism’s project yet.”

Didgee looked from PackRat to Prism. “Okay, so what have you been working on while I was gone, Prism?”

Prism stood up from the laptop and held up her hands. “I’m still learning my way around the software, but I’ve been teaching myself how to use more of the Tinkercad tools. You wouldn’t believe some of the things you can do inside Tinkercad.”

“Can you show us?” asked Coolcrafter10.

“Sure, but I don’t think it’s as impressive as PackRat’s 3D images,” said Prism.

“She’s too humble,” said PackRat. “Her project is just as cool. Come on, let’s go outside, and you can see for yourself. Show them, Prism.”

Prism motioned for the others to follow her. She picked up her laptop, closed it, and the four Minecrafters left the castle. Prism led the way, up a different hill than the one Coolcrafter10 and Didgee had walked down a few hours earlier. As the group reached the top of the hill, a vast ocean became visible. The reflection of the sun was bright on the water, and Prism and PackRat shielded their eyes from the light. But Didgee and Coolcrafter10 just stood, mouths open, forgetting the glare and focusing instead on the sight before them.

Didgee pointed out into the water. “You designed that?” she asked.

Prism nodded. “It only took an hour or so. I used a combination of predesigned buildings from Thingiverse plus my own designs with the Tinkercad tools.”

Coolcrafter10 couldn’t believe his eyes. A futuristic city floated over the ocean, with dozens of buildings in various shapes and sizes and colors. Twisting through the city and up and down and all around the buildings was what appeared to be a rollercoaster. “Who lives there?” asked Coolcrafter10.

PackRat laughed, “No one right now. Prism and I have been hollowing out some of the buildings, but honestly we haven’t gotten much work done. The rollercoaster is just too much fun to ride.”

“You’ve got to show us how you did this,” said Didgee. “I knew Tinkercad was a powerful tool, but this is way beyond what I thought was possible.”

Prism smiled. “I’ll show both of you, but you’ll be surprised at how easy it is. Tinkercad isn’t all that difficult once you figure out a few basics. Let’s head back to the castle, and I’ll show you.”

“Oh, come on, Prism. That can wait. We can’t show them this and expect them not to want to go out and take a ride.” PackRat began walking down the hill toward a pier that stretched from the shoreline to the beginnings of the city’s streets. “I’m going for another ride.”

Coolcrafter10 looked at Prism and then at Didgee. “Uh, yeah, I’m going for a ride,” he replied with a grin. “I want to learn, Prism, but later, okay?” He took off running after PackRat.

Prism shrugged at Didgee. “Go on. I’ve got a few tweaks I plan on making tonight, so take a ride while the city is still open to visitors. In a few hours, I’ll have to close it down for a while.”

Didgee laughed. “Thanks, Prism. You build a nice city, by the way,” she yelled back as she ran to catch up to PackRat and Coolcrafter10.

Prism looked down at her laptop and then back to her friends. She placed the laptop carefully on the ground and ran down the hill. “Wait for me!”

Using the methods you’ve already learned, you can add an unlimited number of objects to your world in a very short amount of time (compared to building them block-by-block). Want an Eiffel Tower in your world? Thingiverse has plenty of Eiffel Tower .stl files to download. Looking to add a tyrannosaurus rex to scare off intruders? The 123D Sculpt+ app has a fearsome looking one that you can grab (as an .obj file to convert with Binvox) and place wherever you like.

Thingiverse.com and other websites like it have thousands and thousands of models available for free download, and chances are that something you have in mind for your worlds already exists as a 3D model that someone has graciously created and uploaded for the world to use.

But what if you’ve got something in mind that can’t be found on Thingiverse.com? Maybe you’d like some combination of a castle with a dragon’s head as the entrance? Or maybe you’d like to place a 3D model of your own house in a Minecraft world? There are lots of things you can probably imagine adding to your world that do not exist on Thingiverse or similar 3D model repositories.

Obviously, you can build those things block-by-block, the old-fashioned way. But if you’ve spent any time building anything in Minecraft, you know that building can be time-consuming. Sometimes you have no choice but to build things a little at a time, especially if you’re testing out different looks or features. At other times, you may be working with a group of people (maybe on a shared Minecraft server) to create something unique and can’t use MCEdit to open and edit the world. But most Minecraft players, if given the chance, would prefer to spend less time building their creations and more time enjoying them and playing in and around them, right?

There may be times when you know what you want to build but you can’t find it on Thingiverse or another repository, and you absolutely want it as fast as possible. That’s when it’s time to go outside Minecraft and try your hand at creating what you want with a tool that lets you design things quickly rather than block-by-block. Tinkercad is one such tool. However, although you’ve been using it throughout the book, you’ve only used about 5% of its features. Now it’s time to get a crash course in how to use its other features. It’s one of my favorite computer-aided design (CAD) apps, and it can help you build amazing creations.

In the remainder of this chapter and in Chapter 10, “Custom Creations, Part 2,” you’re going to learn to use many of the basic tools that are built into Tinkercad. The best way to learn how to use them…is to use them! That’s why I’m going to suggest right now that you open up a web browser, log in to Tinkercad, and follow along in the building of the futuristic city that will be this chapter’s project. When you see me use a tool, click on that tool and perform the same step I describe. Your final result doesn’t have to look exactly like mine, though. As long as you understand how the various tools work, you’ll be in good shape and ready to design your own custom creations in Tinkercad.

I covered how to create a Tinkercad account back in Chapter 1, “Taking Over a Castle,” so go back to that chapter if you need help getting started. Once you’re signed in, you’ll be able to view your user screen and all the various models you’ve created (or imported) and modified. If you’re logging in for the first time, you won’t have any projects to view.

Once you’re logged in, click the Create New Design button to open up a blank Tinkercad project like the one shown in Figure 9.1.

When Tinkercad opens a new project, it gives it a strange name. If you’re following along, your project probably isn’t named Frantic Kieran, like the one shown in Figure 9.1.

To get rid of Tinkercad’s meaningless-to-you name, you need to rename a project and save it. So right now, click on the Design menu and select the Properties option, as shown in Figure 9.2.

You can change the name of your project by typing in a new one in the Name box, as shown in Figure 9.3. You don’t have to worry about the other settings in this window right now, but just know that if you change the Visibility option from Private to Public, other Tinkercad users will be able to view your design and download it. Click the Save Changes button to commit your name change.

After you’ve changed your project name, you can return to the Design menu and choose the Save option as often as you like. (Keep in mind that Tinkercad automatically saves your changes every few minutes.)

Running down the right side of the screen are collections of shapes and other items that you can drag and drop onto the workplane. These objects are organized into categories such as Geometric, Letters, and Symbols. A few of the categories offer tools instead of objects, and you’ve already seen the Import category used in previous chapters, when pulling in an .stl file into Tinkercad.

Figure 9.4 shows the Geometric category opened up. (The triangle that points to a category name points down when clicked on and expands to show that category’s contents.) As you can see, this category has a bunch of shapes, such as Box, Pyramid, and Sphere.

Running from left to right along the top of the screen are some menus (Design, Edit, and Help) and some other useful tools, including the Undo and Redo buttons. You’ll learn about some of these in this chapter and Chapter 10. (The Help menu offers some video tutorials, so definitely check them out when you have some time.)

I could spend this chapter’s remaining pages going over each button and tool in detail, but that wouldn’t be much fun. You know what’s fun? Learning by doing. So let’s get right to it and start creating something fun that will also be useful in a Minecraft world. Take a look at Figure 9.5, which shows a futuristic city. By the time you’re done with this chapter, you’ll have your very own version of this city, and it will be ready to be imported into one of your Minecraft worlds with MCEdit.

Don’t believe me? I know it looks a bit complicated, but I’m going to show you how to create it easily and quickly. It all starts by dragging a Box object onto the workplane.

When you drop an object on the workplane, that object is automatically selected. You can tell that an object is selected because it has little white squares in various places around its edges and on its top surface. It also has a black cone near its top that points up. You can see these white boxes and the black cone in Figure 9.6, but if you click on any empty part of the workplane, the object will be deselected while remaining in place, as shown in Figure 9.7.

Click an item to select it again. If you have two or more objects you want to select at the same time, you can click-and-hold the mouse button as you drag a selection window around the objects. Another option for selecting multiple objects is to hold down the Shift key while clicking on the objects you wish to select.

Before you start adding my city’s buildings, you need to create the piece of land it will sit on. To do this, you can modify that Box object a bit. First, you need to flatten it. To do this, you click and hold on the little white box on its top surface and drag down. Figure 9.8 shows that as you drag down, the Box object begins to flatten. Notice that Tinkercad displays the thickness—in this case, 4mm (4 millimeters).

Flatten the box down so that it’s only 2mm thick. Then it’s time to stretch its length and width. To do this, you can click on any of the four white squares that are visible in the corners. If you click and hold while dragging away from the flat Box object, it widens or lengthens (depending on the direction of the drag). Notice in Figure 9.9 that the width and length are different values (55mm and 59mm, respectively), but the height remains at 2mm.

Use a combination of the little white boxes in the four corners to drag and stretch the flattened box until you’re happy with it. Figure 9.10 shows the box expanded to fill about one-third of the workplane.

Before you start adding buildings, here are a few things to test with your flattened Box object:

Click on any solid-colored portion of the Box object and hold down the mouse as you drag it. The Box object will move around. Use this technique to move and place objects exactly where you want them.

If you hold down the Shift key while dragging on one of the four small white boxes in the corners, the length and width will grow at the same rate. This is useful for keeping a square’s perfect shape (with length and width the same value) as it grows in size.

Rotating the workplane by clicking and holding down on both mouse buttons as you move the mouse. If you’re using a touchpad, press down with two fingers and pivot to get the same effect.

Roll the scroll wheel on top of your mouse to zoom in and out on the workplane. Or, with two fingers on a touchpad, drag up to zoom out and drag down to zoom in.

Now it’s time to add a skyscraper. Drag another Box object onto the workplane (but not touching the current flattened Box object), as shown in Figure 9.11.

The new Box object has the same color as the flattened one. This is fine, but changing the color will make it easier to see all the different city objects you’ll be adding. To do this, click on the new box to select it (if it isn’t already selected) and then click on the Color box to see a selection of colors, as shown in Figure 9.12. Click on a color—maybe a blue—to select it for the object.

A skyscraper should be tall but not too wide or long. To get the size and shape you want, hold down the Shift key while dragging one of the corner white squares in toward the center of the Box object. This will decrease the length and width of the skyscraper but keep those measurements identical to each other, as shown in Figure 9.13. Shrink them down to around 4mm.

Now it’s time to send that skyscraper into the sky. Click and hold on the white square on the top of the Box object and drag up, as shown in Figure 9.14. Send it up to about a height of 50mm.

Now all that’s left to do is place the skyscraper. Select it and then click and hold on any colored spot (but not on the little white squares or the black cone), drag it, and drop it where you want it. Figure 9.15 shows the skyscraper placed near the center of the flattened Box object.

That’s one building down. Now you just need to create 50 more. Just kidding! While you can easily create 50 new skyscrapers by dragging out 50 Box objects and changing their length, width, and height, there’s a much faster way to do this.

First, select a skyscraper. (If you have only one, it’s an easy choice.) Then press Ctrl+C in Windows or Command+C on a Mac to copy. Then press Ctrl+V in Windows or Command+V on a Mac to paste the copy on the workplane. The copy will slightly overlap the original, so click and hold on the copy and drag it where you want it and release the mouse button to drop it in place.

Press Command+V or Ctrl+V as many times as you like. Each time you do, Tinkercad places another copy of the skyscraper. Figure 9.16 shows six copies pasted on the workplane and dragged to various parts of the city. You’ll notice that they’re not all the same size, though. That’s because I’ve also clicked on the little white square on the top of each skyscraper and changed the height so the buildings don’t all look the same.

It’s starting to look like a city, but a futuristic city isn’t going to be just a bunch of tall rectangular boxes, right? There needs to be some variety!

Fortunately, Tinkercad has a lot more shapes than the Box object. Let’s try some!

Drag out a Sphere object and change its color as shown in Figure 9.17.

You can shrink or enlarge the Sphere (while keeping its perfect spherical shape) by holding down the Shift key as you drag one of the four corner squares. If you don’t hold down the Shift key, you can twist the Sphere object into unusual shapes such as the watermelon-shaped object in Figure 9.18 by dragging any of the four corner squares or even the one on top.

After you’ve created a spherical building that you’re happy with, try to drag it onto the city streets and see what happens. As you can see in Figure 9.19, part of the building is “buried” in the city streets. How do you make sure the entire sphere is visible?

This is an easy fix. Once again, click on the object to select it. Remember the black cone that appears near the top of an object? When you click and hold down on that cone, you can move the mouse up or down to raise or lower the selected object. The amount the object is moved (up or down) will be displayed on the screen. If the flattened Box object you placed for the city streets is 2mm thick, all you need to do is raise up the Sphere object so that it’s 2mm above the workplane, as shown in Figure 9.20.

When the spherical building is the right height above the city streets, you can copy and paste to make more. Figure 9.21 shows a couple more spherical-shaped buildings added to the futuristic city and reshaped for variety.

You can experiment with some of the other unique shapes in the Geometric category list. Figure 9.22 shows a few Hexagonal Prism objects, a Paraboloid object, and a couple Torus objects added to the city. In this figure, you can see that I’ve pulled in the buildings to tighten up the spaces between them, and I’ve changed the sizes and shapes and colors of many of the buildings. There’s nothing added to this city that you can’t do yourself with the skills you’ve already picked up.

The futuristic city is starting to look like a city, with plenty of buildings in different shapes and sizes. But so far, you’ve only used the basic shapes in the Geometric category. It might be nice to have some buildings that are combinations of basic shapes. Imagine a round building with a dome on top, or how about a Pyramid-shaped building that rests on a round base? There aren’t any limits to what you can design if you know how to use the tools properly, so before we finish up this chapter, let’s look at a few more Tinkercad tools that let you do some really interesting things in your futuristic city model.

I mentioned in the last section a building with a dome on top. Let me show you how easy it is to make something like that.

You can overlap Tinkercad’s shapes to create new shapes. So to make a building with a dome, start by dragging two new objects onto the workplane—a Cylinder and a Sphere—as shown in Figure 9.23.

Both the Cylinder and the Sphere objects have a length and width of 20mm in this case, which is perfect if you want half of the sphere to be placed on top of the cylinder to give it a rounded, dome-shaped roof.

To get the sphere on top of the cylinder, you need to raise the sphere by using the black cone. As shown in Figure 9.24, a shadow underneath the sphere indicates that it’s floating above the workplane.

Next, drag the sphere so that it begins to merge into the cylinder, as shown in Figure 9.25.

With a little more dragging, carefully move the sphere into place so that it blends perfectly with the sides of the cylinder, as shown in Figure 9.26. You may have to raise or lower the sphere a little until you get a smooth transition from cylinder to sphere.

You can move the cylinder and sphere together by selecting both (using the Shift key or dragging a selection box around them) and placing them in the city where you want them.

Notice that the sphere and cylinder are different colors. If you leave the building like this, when you import the city using MCEdit, the building will have orange-colored blocks on the bottom and blue blocks on top. But what if you want the domed building to be all the same color? To do that, you select both objects and click on the Group button to combine both objects into a single object. Then you can pick a color to apply to the entire building, as shown in Figure 9.27.

You can continue to add additional shapes (by overlapping them) to the domed building and then click on the Group button to turn them into a single object. Grouped items can also be separated again by using the Ungroup button; grouped objects can always be ungrouped, even after saving a model. Weeks or months later, should you decide you wish to break up a collection of grouped objects, Tinkercad will always remember how to break up a single object into its various smaller parts.

Figure 9.28 shows a few other shapes added to the domed building and grouped together. (You can easily get this effect by dragging some Hexagonal Prism objects onto the workplane, shrinking them down a little, and then dragging them so they go inside the cylinder just a small amount.)

Once you’re happy with the building, you can shrink or enlarge it by using the little squares. Figure 9.29 shows the domed building shrunk a bit and also flattened.

Let’s build one more building—this one hourglass shaped—before wrapping up this chapter. This one might sound a little complex, but once you know the actual “trick” to doing it, you’ll be using that trick a lot.

Start by dragging out two Cone objects, as shown in Figure 9.30.

To make an hourglass, you need to flip one of the cones. There are a couple ways to do this, and I’m going to show you the easiest method now. (The other method involves rotating pieces, and you’ll learn how to do that in Chapter 10.)

First, select one of the cones click the Adjust tool, and select the Mirror option, as shown in Figure 9.31.

After you click the Mirror option, three double-arrows appear near the selected cone, as shown in Figure 9.32.

Each of these double-arrows causes the selected object to flip in the directions the arrows are pointing. To flip it vertically (upside down), click on the double-arrow that points up and down. (The other two double-arrows allow you to flip the object front to back or left to right.) Figure 9.33 shows what happens to the selected cone.

Click the Dismiss Mirror Tool button to turn off the Mirror option and then use the black cone to raise the upside-down cone a little. Finally, drag the upside-down cone until it blends with the other cone, group the two cones, and resize the combined object a little bit…until you end up with an hourglass-shaped building like the one shown in Figure 9.34.

After dragging the hourglass building into place, make some color changes to the city’s buildings (including changing the street color to gray) and do a few more copy, paste, and resize operations to create a futuristic city like the one shown in Figure 9.35.

Now all that’s left to do is click on the Design menu, select Download for Minecraft, and use MCEdit to import the city into one of your worlds. Figure 9.36 shows the futuristic city sitting proudly out in the ocean.

You can do a lot more with the city. You can use a few more Tinkercad tools to create even crazier buildings. All these tools that you’re learning will also come in handy as you branch out and start designing your own 3D models.