Update: Minecraft Renders Stunning Game of Thrones Screenshots

[War Penguin]

Is it just me, or does the HD textures/mods sort of take away from how impressive it really is?

I mean, when you have all of these detailed textures at your disposal, yeah it's pretty accurate. I mean, that's why it's there: to make it look accurate. But when you have the default, it's much more impressive because you have to work with what you got, and it's still pretty damn awesome. To me, HD textures/mods kind of make it a lot easier than it actually is, or at least make it look like it, while default textures are much harder, but give you a greater appreciation of how they used whatever they could at their disposal and they still made it look awesome.

I know I should be amazed at how these look, but when I see them in all of their HD glory, I just sort of think, "Yeah, cool, but it looks like something someone made with a modeling program on their PC." It just doesn't seem like Minecraft, and it kind of takes away from how cool it really is.

 

[Tothas]

The way the third picture is framed reminds me so much of Myst:

That was exactly my first thought too-

HEY

I SHOULD MAKE MINECRAFTIAN MYST.

Thanks for the idea!

This is amazing, I had never made that connection

 

[Pseudoboss]

I wish someone would mod minecraft to make it look as good in the screen shots normally.

There is, It's called Sonic Esther's Unbelievable Shaders, and, once configured properly makes Minecraft look beautiful (Sure, it takes me down a good 300 fps, to 28 but it's still amazing.)
I use it for all my screenshots, but not to play normally. I'm too lazy to mess with my texturepack to get it to not be so bright it gives me a headache. http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/940974-125sonic-ethers-unbelievable-shaders-glsl-shaders-dynamic-shadows-more/

OT, Wow, is there a server for this? It looks like it might be as cool as the LOTR server. Y'know, the one that had the entirety of Middle Earth, with the main regions constructed to full scale, with scaled-down (I think 1/12) regions in between. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhksNvUwaRc (skip to bout 27 minutes in fi you don't care for the Minecraft pleasantries.

 

[Tothas]

Pseudoboss, you can find us at www.westeroscraft.com and our ip is mc.westeroscraft.com

 

[Fijiman]

I don't think I would ever have the patience to build anything on that scale in that much detail. I wish I did, but then again I also wish that I had a half decent computer and the PC version of Minecraft.(not that there's not a lot of fun to be had with the 360 version)

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

How do people even make these type of things?!

Is there some kind of software that you can download that allows you to create Minecraft constructions in macro form?

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Pseudoboss, you can find us at www.westeroscraft.com and our ip is mc.westeroscraft.com

Being as you seem to be part of the team who made this, perhaps you can answer my question.

 

[Storax]

How do people even make these type of things?!

Is there some kind of software that you can download that allows you to create Minecraft constructions in macro form?

It'd be done on a Survival Multi-player Server and it would have taken forever to do :L

AFAIK, no.

 

[snappydog]

Did they ever finish the LOTR one...? And this looks awesome. I'm thinking, though: they're building the locations as they look in the TV series, but we never see every aspect of them so presumably there's a bit of book-series mixing going on somewhere. Plus the regions between each major location would have to be scaled down and entirely improvised as to what they look like, right? And then what happens if GRRM comes out with a new location that is somewhere they've already built an improvised travelway on?

 

[roostuf]

this is why i love minecraft!

if you put your mind to it, you can make anything.

 

[Tothas]

Being as you seem to be part of the team who made this, perhaps you can answer my question.

We have a group of builders who live around the world, about 50 in total consistent builders. There are some programs you can use such as World Edit and Voxel to make your builds easier but we dont use them in builds, only to edit and terraform. Since our bigger builds tend to be filmed we place every block by hand.

To make it look the way it does for the wallpapers we use something called Sonic's Unbelievable GLGS Shaders and then we render that picture in a program called Chunky to make it super pretty.

Did they ever finish the LOTR one...? And this looks awesome. I'm thinking, though: they're building the locations as they look in the TV series, but we never see every aspect of them so presumably there's a bit of book-series mixing going on somewhere. Plus the regions between each major location would have to be scaled down and entirely improvised as to what they look like, right? And then what happens if GRRM comes out with a new location that is somewhere they've already built an improvised travelway on?

The LOTR one is still up and I am unsure if they finished or not, we are working off http://www.sermountaingoat.co.uk/map/versions/speculative_map.jpg map atm. We are doing Westeros first because that map will be as close to correct as it can be as all the regions are given maps in the books. The way we plan a build is to take all the information available about a place from the books, every little detail, then we turn to artistic interpretations, HBO stills and our collective imagination. But the book details are first and foremost our concern (hence our moon door isnt a hole in the ground). Every location that is mentioned in the books is going to be built regardless of size or information provided. The only fact we knew about Lannisport is that it had a sewer. The only fact we have about Highgarden (unbuilt atm) is that it has gardens, singers, and they boat down the Mander. We are currently migrating to a larger map to help with scale issues, we said before we were on a 1:200 scale but our builds are always closer to 1:1. The new map will be 40 sqkm larger than L.A. (roughly 27,000 x 55,000). We are building ever location as close as we can to that map I've provided thus, no road or build will take the place of any location GRRM might throw at us and in October they are releasing a coffee table map book of all the locations and major cities and such. We've only just started debating about what we will do when the streetmaps of the cities come out, but probably we'll change them. We are rebuilding Kings Landing as our next build to fit the scale we've set with Lannisport (since its the middle of the 5 big cities of Westeros we can fit the scale around it for the other cities) The original KL was built by about 7 folks in 3 months and our community has grown much much larger so we've decided to rebuild. I hope that answers your question =b

 

[Weaver]

Okay, these images were put through third-party renderers and shaders, but that doesn't change that fact that you're still looking at Minecraft screenshots

Actually, it does. These are no longer screenshots; they're renders of the minecraft geometry.

 

[Tothas]

Okay, these images were put through third-party renderers and shaders, but that doesn't change that fact that you're still looking at Minecraft screenshots

Actually, it does. These are no longer screenshots; they're renders of the minecraft geometry.

But it is still a minecraft build there.

 

[aeroblaster]

Wow that's just amazing. Looks even better than the LotR project.

 

[Vuliev]

I...there are no words. Wow.

 

[Joccaren]

Eh, welcome to my Minecraft.

256 or 512 Photorealistic Texture pack + GLSL shaders or Water shaders, dependent on what I want a picture of.

I'd say those screenshots probably have some effects put on them after being taken with Photoshop or something, but nonetheless they look nice.

 

[Legion]

Shame the staff on that server are complete and utter arseholes.

I twice logged on there to ask two very simple (and easy) questions. Both times I asked politely, and asked with a gap in between so as not to seem pushy.

Both times I was completely and utterly ignored. The first was because one of them thought chasing an Ender Dragon around was a better idea (it can't damage anything), the second they clearly thought answering was not worth their time.

In both cases I asked who the staff were before asking the questions as well, so it wasn't a case of them not noticing.

 

[Tothas]

Well Legion, what was it you had to ask? We tend to answer as many questions as possible but we do have a lot of people online to listen to. Also keep in mind we set up a ranger rank to help answer questions to keep the less serious questions filtered from us. And then finally it is a game and we don't always pay attention to chat and like to have fun chasing around our friends who are dressed up as ender dragons. It is game of thrones you know.

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

You know, that's definitely the coolest thing I've ever seen in Minecraft ever (and I've seen some awesome stuff) but more importantly, it's alerted me to the knowledge that Bethesda MUST make a game based on Song of Ice and Fire. It's not up for debate.