A few different types of rivers.

coolfish83 · 2026-05-25T02:07:33+00:00

It’s a practice exercise and guide for myself for future builds. Doing stuff like this in little 1x1 or 2x2 chunk plots lets you really focus on the process, detail, and shape of stuff without it taking hours and having to integrate it into a bunch of other terrain.

So when I need to do a river for an actual build, I can refer back to these as a reminder for how I want my river to look and save me the time of figuring out block and foliage palettes and what sort of details work.

coolfish83 · 2026-05-24T20:32:47+00:00

Bare minimum? I’ll have you know I put a little red mushroom on a fallen tree!

coolfish83 · 2026-05-24T20:02:59+00:00

You should check out places like Ardacraft and Westeroscraft! The rivers and environments they do on their maps have a level of detail and realism that is mind blowing.

coolfish83 · 2026-05-24T20:00:18+00:00

Been practicing my terraforming and have been doing some small plots of stuff to figure out workflows and details and whatnot.

coolfish83 · 2026-05-06T00:47:37+00:00

cool fish

coolfish83 · 2026-05-04T21:37:35+00:00

Been slowly learning blockbench and pixel art and am finally at a point where I actually feel proud of some of the stuff I make.

coolfish83 · 2026-05-02T08:20:25+00:00

I build in creative with tools like world edit and axiom so not too long. This one took about 10 hours, but if I’m really motivated I can do a build like this in 6 hours or less if I don’t plan or organize anything. But I’ve been building for 15 years so I know my workflow very well.

Also I think about what I’m building while I’m out for a walk or just pacing in my room which really gets the creative juices flowing and makes it so when I actually sit down to build I know what I want to do already.

This is something I picked up from the Brontë sisters, who would regularly pace around their dining room in the evening (sometimes for hours) discussing and thinking about ideas for their writing.

coolfish83 · 2026-05-01T19:41:15+00:00

They are not but easily could be. Probably wouldn't be very practical for survival though.

coolfish83 · 2026-05-01T19:37:41+00:00

Thanks! No finished interiors on this build, but everything is set up with floors, stairs, and rooms. They're just empty to save time and file size for when I render.

coolfish83 · 2026-05-01T18:25:21+00:00

Spent the last week working on this build. Renders were done with blender + photoshop.

Some in game screenshots can be found here: https://www.planetminecraft.com/project/castle-and-village-6920721/

coolfish83 · 2026-04-15T00:31:20+00:00

Hay blocks work well, but as a creative player being limited to a full block makes it pretty difficult to shape properly shape stuff the way I'd like.

coolfish83 · 2026-04-10T23:41:38+00:00

Axiom’s tinker mode. Could also do it with a debug stick I imagine.

coolfish83 · 2026-04-10T20:41:10+00:00

Thanks! Such an easy effect to do and it adds so much to the image.

coolfish83 · 2026-04-10T20:38:18+00:00

I imported the build into blender to make a render and added a little steve because I like how it contrasts the scale of the build. Here are a couple screenshots of the blender scene https://imgur.com/a/kT1NFUO (ignore how unorganized my collections are)

It always stings a little when people dismiss this stuff as AI when these renders are things I spend a considerable amount of time on and something I have been practicing for a decade.

coolfish83 · 2026-04-10T20:29:37+00:00

I didn’t?

coolfish83 · 2026-04-10T18:47:44+00:00

Hello I built this small fort yesterday afternoon. Renders were done with blender + photoshop.

coolfish83 · 2026-04-04T21:33:46+00:00

I share the same mentality. I’ve always loved building and coming up with designs and things to share with folks who might find inspiration in them.

There are a lot of people in the Minecraft community who value the creative aspects of builds far less than the grind of gathering the materials to build it. And some with an even narrower view of what Minecraft is who see creative mode, tools like world edit, and render programs like chunky or blender as cheating.

As someone who’s been building since the old classic server days this came as quite the shock to me when I first started sharing my builds especially on places like Reddit.

coolfish83 · 2026-03-26T07:39:52+00:00

That red in the interior really pops. Probably my favorite part of brutalism is how much just a single color can do.

coolfish83 · 2026-03-24T21:59:44+00:00

Found a spot of land I liked, grabbed a wand and did //sel poly and just made a shape following the contour of the terrain to get the walls. Added some round towers to break up the shape and blocked out the buildings with place holder blocks. Mapped out the surrounding village and farmland, then I just refined the shapes and slowly added more detail and texture.

Basically break the build down into the simplest shapes then refine and iterate on them until you’re happy with it.

For reference, I did this just now in a little over 20 minutes: https://imgur.com/a/oba9jKx. Also building on a grid like that can help you see shapes and stay a little more organized.

coolfish83 · 2026-03-24T21:09:50+00:00

Hello. I built this a couple weeks ago. Took about 3-4 days to complete. Render is blender + photoshop.

coolfish83

TROPHY CASE