12. Discover More MCEdit Tools

What You’ll Be Doing

Learn the Copy and Paste commands

Make a mirror image of an object

Use the Clone tool for precise copy placements

Throughout the book, you’ve seen a number of projects that have used MCEdit, and hopefully you’ve gotten plenty of practice using this amazing tool. You may be so fast at using MCEdit, however, that you might have overlooked a few of the useful tools it offers. This chapter finishes up the book by looking at a few more uses for MCEdit that you’ll hopefully find helpful with your future Minecraft projects.

Keep in mind that MCEdit is constantly being updated. I’ve used MCEdit 1.0 for all the projects in this book, but MCEdit 2.0 is in development. Once that version is released as an official version, you’ll want to install it and test all the features you already know from 1.0 as well as take a look at what new features it brings to the table.

For now, however, let’s take a look together at a few more ways that MCEdit can assist you when it comes to engineering your perfect world.

FIGURE 12.1 Attack of the T-rex!

You know what’s better than one tyrannosaurus rex? You might have answered “two,” but the best answer is “as many as you can squeeze in”!

Fortunately, MCEdit doesn’t require you to import a new tyrannosaurus rex because there’s a copy feature built in that makes it super-easy to just select what you want to copy and then paste another one…and another one…and another one.

Before you can make a copy in MCEdit, you need to have the object selected. It could be an animal, a building, or even just a bit of interesting terrain that you like and want to replicate.

As shown in Figure 12.2, you click on the Select tool and drag a box around the tyrannosaurus rex. You can use the blue Nudge and yellow Nudge buttons to fine-tune the selection area and reduce it to the smallest area possible that still contains the entire dinosaur.

FIGURE 12.2 Use the Select tool to surround the dinosaur.

After selecting the dinosaur, you next click on the Copy button. A copy of the dinosaur is made available for pasting wherever you like and for however many copies you’d like to place. To place a copy, click on the Paste button and then move your mouse pointer to the desired location. As shown in Figure 12.3, a green selection area indicates where the copy will be placed.

FIGURE 12.3 Move the green selection area where you want to place the copy.

Click to lock in the location of the copy. You can use the Rotate and Roll buttons to make changes to the orientation. For example, in Figure 12.4 I’ve clicked on the Rotate button once to turn the dinosaur 90 degrees, so it’s facing its partner. You can also click and hold on the green Nudge button and tap the WASD keys to move the location one block at a time in the direction of the tapped key.

FIGURE 12.4 Paste the copy and rotate and nudge it to place it where you want it.

To place the copy permanently, don’t forget to click on the Import button. After that copy is placed, select Paste again if you want to add another. You can use the Paste button over and over again (or press Ctrl+V in Windows or Command+V on a Mac), and you can make changes to the orientation (with the Rotate button) and size (with Scale Factor) as needed.

After just a few clicks of the Paste button, the citizens of the domed cities are probably wondering just how durable those glass domes are against the gang of T-rexes shown in Figure 12.5.

FIGURE 12.5 Attack of the T-rexes (the sequel).

I’m going to start this demonstration by dropping into Tinkercad a castle that isn’t symmetrical. In Figure 12.6, you’re looking down on a castle from above, and you can see that the left side isn’t an exact mirror of the right.

FIGURE 12.6 A nonsymmetrical castle.

If you make a copy of the castle and paste the copy and rotate it 180 degrees, you end up with something like what Figure 12.7 shows.

FIGURE 12.7 Two copies of the same castle but not facing same direction.

If you examine Figure 12.7 carefully, you’ll notice that while the two side-by-side castles look similar, there are some differences. Look at the towers that are closest to the front of the image, and you’ll see a round tower closest to the front on the left castle and a square tower closest to the front on the right castle.

I’d like a truly symmetrical castle, and while I can easily make a copy of this castle in Tinkercad and use the Mirror tool to create an exact mirror, I can also get the effect I want in MCEdit. Someday you might want to create a mirror image of something in Minecraft (as opposed to Tinkercad), so I’m going to show you how easy that is to do.

In Figure 12.8 you can see the nonsymmetrical castle placed in one of my worlds, and I’m viewing it in MCEdit.

FIGURE 12.8 This nonsymmetrical castle needs a mirror image.

Select the castle, as shown in Figure 12.9, and click Copy—just as you did in the previous section.

FIGURE 12.9 Select the castle and make a copy of it.

Now here’s the tricky part: Before you place the castle in its final resting place, you need to press the G key or click Mirror. If you look at the control panel on the far left side of the screen (where the Rotate button is located), you’ll notice an option called Mirror. You can click the Mirror button or just press the G key, and the copy instantly becomes a mirror image of the original.

Drag one of the round towers on the copy so it overlaps its mirror image on the castle on the right, as shown in Figure 12.10. (Use the Nudge button to get it as close as possible to overlapping, but it might not be perfect.)

FIGURE 12.10 Overlapping the same tower on the two castles.

When you’re done with the overlapping, click the Import button, save your work, and then open up the world in Minecraft to see how it looks. As you can see in Figure 12.11, the two castles are perfect mirror images, and they share a single round tower.

FIGURE 12.11 One mega castle from two “smaller” castles!

The Mirror option is perfect when you have two objects that you want to share orientation. The Mirror tool is especially useful when copying and rotating one object 180 degrees would result in one of the objects facing backward.

For this example, you’re going to be building a bridge. Take a look at Figure 12.12, and you’ll find a small section of a bridge span. You’re going to use this single span to create a longer bridge with the Clone tool.

FIGURE 12.12 This little bridge can easily become one long bridge.

You need to import the bridge section into a Minecraft world. (For this example, I’m using a flat world so you’ll be able to easily see how this works, but the concept works just as well with mountains, lakes, and all other terrain.) Figure 12.13 shows the single section of bridge been imported with MCEdit.

FIGURE 12.13 Import the single section of the bridge to get started.

After importing the bridge and placing it where you like (and pointed in the direction you want), use the Select tool and carefully use the Nudge buttons to reduce the selection box so it surrounds the bridge and maybe just a little bit of space around the structure. Figure 12.14 shows the bridge surrounded with the Select tool.

FIGURE 12.14 Use the Select tool on the bridge section.

Next, you click on the Clone button. After clicking on the Clone button, a new window like the one in Figure 12.15 appears.

FIGURE 12.15 Clicking the Clone button brings up the Clone control panel.

It’s hard to tell from the figure, but there’s an exact copy (a clone) of the selected bridge, sharing space with the original. To see the cloned copy, click on the single Nudge button and use the WASD keys to move it. The clone will appear in a green selection box. In Figure 12.16, I’ve used the A key to move the clone bridge to the left so you can see it.

FIGURE 12.16 The clone object will appear in a green selection box.

If you want the little bridge sections to be connected, keep pressing the A key while holding down the Nudge button. As you can see in Figure 12.17, you can stop when the end of the clone copy is still overlapping the original bridge section.

FIGURE 12.17 The cloned bridge section overlaps the original bridge section.

Take a look at the Clone control panel, and you’ll notice a text box with the value -63 in it. This means I moved the cloned bridge section 63 block lengths to the left. (If I’d moved the clone section to the right, it would have been 63, indicating that the copy moved 63 block lengths in the other direction.)

You can enter values in this box to get very specific placement, but keep in mind that the values are measured from the original object. Feel free to experiment with the WASD keys and see how a clone can be nudged forward, backward, left and right, and even up and down. The middle text box (just above the on that shows -63 in Figure 12.17) controls the up/down movement (Z-axis); a positive (+) value raises the cloned object that number of block lengths above the surface, while a negative (-) value lowers it.

Say that you’re satisfied with the -63 block length movement to the left. While you could easily click the Clone button, you’re not done yet. You want to connect a bunch of bridge lengths—say, 20 of them.

Because you’ve already defined how far the cloned object should be from the original, all you need to do now is specify how many clones should be added. For that, you type 19 in the Repeat box (not 20; the original bridge counts as 1, so you only need 19 “repeats”), and MCEdit shows the direction and length that many clones will occupy, as you can see in Figure 12.18.

FIGURE 12.18 Specify how many clones will be created.

In Figure 12.18 you can see the green frame heading off into the distance. All that’s left to do is to click the Clone button and let MCEdit do the hard work. As you can see in Figure 12.19, the bridge now looks like a real bridge! (Note that it can take a while to make and place a large number of copies, so be patient.)

FIGURE 12.19 The bridge disappears into the distance!

I’ve discovered over the years that when someone tells me that you “can’t do that in the game/program,” it lights a fire for me to go and find a way. Often, someone else has already found a solution, and all I have to do is a quick search online to find a video or set of instructions. But sometimes I have to experiment and try new things to figure out how to make things work. (The perfect example is when I was told that there was no way to view my Minecraft worlds in 3D without an Oculus Rift device. I think Chapter 7, “Seeing Your World In 3D,” proved that wrong, huh?)

With Minecraft, your imagination is really your only limit. If you want something in your world, go find a 3D model on Thingiverse or some other model library. If it doesn’t exist, create it with Tinkercad or another CAD application. Instead of creating something one block at a time, you can take an idea that’s in your head and make it real in far less time.

I hope you’ve found a lot of inspiration for your Minecraft worlds, and hopefully the skills you picked up in this book will help you refine your worlds and impress your friends and family. Better yet, you may have discovered a skill you enjoy that could help you in school and maybe even a future career. You’re now an official Minecraft engineer, and there is no limit to what you can learn and create for a Minecraft world and the real world.

Have fun!