Collaborative Map Making in Minecraft

So today I decided to do some experimentation with Minecraft, using it as a tool to create objects and analyzing it's potential to be used as a multiplayer map maker for games other than itself.

The building we are going to export

JMC2OBJ allows you to export segments of a Minecraft map as an .obj file. For this test I created a simple building (see above) and will attempt to export that into Blender.

Blenders Rendition of the Exported Building

Once the building has been imported to blender we can see a fairly accurate rendition of the building. Minus the correct textures. After adding normals and putting this into a format that my OpenGL program understands we can then try and run it!

OpenGL with SDL

My current application for reading in .obj files for OpenGl sucks and has no camera controls but we can see here that the building itself has rendered correctly. It doesn't have the correct shading but it is a start at least! Also, the .obj can be successfully imported into other programs such as Unity with ease.

.obj with Unity

Although this only gives us simple shapes and basic objects. using this allows us to create simple version of our 3D levels that we can explore and interact with firsts, we can then test the game without the use of artists. At a later stage we can forward these to map artists for texturing and to redo in our own visual style. 

The use of Minecraft as the tool for map creation also allows the team to collaborate on a single level whilst being at many different computers, making edits in real time and seeing the changes immediately.