[Guide] Jelle’s build guide

OUTDATED: New build guides can be found here.


This is what I tried with extreme hills, and I have to be honest here, I don’t think this looks good. I have been going around this trying to find out why it doesn’t look good, but I think it’s just the poor vanilla terraforming together with the fact that this is my worst biome; I’d suggest just making a forest when you’ve got an extreme hills biome, this is both too big and really difficult to do well…

This biome might be the hardest to do… The swamp, most people hate it and change the biome. A reason for me to do everything I can to make it look good, and, I actually think it worked… (even though it took me about half an hour to do this little side here…) I changed just about everything in it, but it turns out to be one of my favourites… Only, it is quite complicated… First off, the terrain. I made a normal hillside. To keep the vanilla generation in it I placed some dirt around in the water where the water touches the dirt. After that I placed some tall grass at the dirt and placed oak leaves in some corners, to break up the texture a little bit (I’m explaining it all now, I know…). After that I planned all trees: I placed them 7-12 blocks from each other, but I didn't start making them until I had everything planned. Now it’s time to actually make them, one by one.

You firstly need to make a way too big trunk, this is an example of one. (I messed up myself quite a few times, so I think it can be useful to show how it’s done…) (step 4.1)

This trunk is, as you can see, way bigger than the ones from the other trees, but, it isn’t any taller than the normal tall trees, the main difference is that the base of it is way bigger: that thing just needs to be extremely big. I’d also suggest making it the biggest at the side it isn’t tilting towards.
Once you’ve done that you want to take your birch leaves and place them around the trunk. (step 4.2.1)

This is the way the first leaves are placed. As you can see, they are kind of free floating and they are kind of all spread out, but not even nearly as much as with the normal oak trees.

This is the last step for it: place some more leaves under the the leaves to make them look like vines. (step 4.2.2)

There we go, as you can see, I placed vine-like leaves under the basic leaves of the tree; it’s quite hard to explain but I’m sure that it’ll work the first time you try… (this isn’t a unique technique btw, it’s a technique that I originally found trying to learn how to do fairy-tale trees, so, if you try to make those, be sure to add some of these vines in, it’ll look amazing!)

Okay, those are the trees, now you only need to go around to place the blue orchids and the lily pads.

As a last biome I wanted to do a snowy biome or something, but I wasn’t able to find one, sadly… But, I did want to have 5 biomes… so, I chose the jungle one. And, here it is:

Doesn’t it look beautiful? There are nice big trees, together with quite a few smaller ones to make the big ones jut out, and it all looks quite natural…
(this isn’t the vanilla biome if you’re wondering, I changed two things: I made the big oak trees more messy, so that they didn’t have those large connected surfaces, and I changed all smaller jungle trees to be more cone-shaped, just look between the two big trees in the front if you want to know what I mean with that… (It’s so little change, but it looks so much better))

Annyways. That’s all of the grass colours and so, basically everything you can do with the landscaping next to your house. Thank you very much for reading, and I’ll end it with a picture of the house we started with.

"Don't read this yet"? But it looks good!

Romoved that now.

My spelling and grammar only still is a little poor, I just read through it agian, and it's horrible, but, I need to eat now, it basicly is correct, but It's slightly hard to read...

I'll read through it in a bit, and can send corrections your way.

That took me a good 30 minutes, but I got through it all and enjoyed it!
I'll pm you a link to the file.

Right on,

I changed everything you suggested, and a little more, since I saw some other mistakes with personal pronouns...

So, it's now, two hours after I posted it, a proper guide. I hope everyone likes it

Bring Up My Posts

A technique I found out today: If you're using bock variation in your landscaping (mixing in different kinds of blocks to give it a little more texture) be sure to use a blocks that look less like eachother under water (so if you're using stone and andesite for your rocks, use stone and cyan stained clay) becuase the water makes it otherwise look to plain.

While I may haven't taken the time to read everything, I can see you're trying to get to the point quickly. Personally, I would try explaining why a building is appealing or not. No matter what the teaching topic is, people can connect the material to a broader level. In this thread or other building guide, I believe the audience is more likely to connect what they read to aspects beyond Minecraft.

Looking at my own guides, I've written the majority of them with sciences in-mind. I'm thinking about making more threads in the future. But I'm also partially concerned by how they'll affect the reception of the buildings I create in-game. People's standards and expectation change over time with technology. Although, the positive feedback I've received on post-guide creations, such as the latest Enderman Farm of my "Ender Builder's Campaign", doesn't exactly show a reduction of applause.
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Example Guide:
https://empireminecraft.com/threads/building-art-guide-patterns.43257/

I have changed it where I could but, for qutie some things I don't know myselve why it is that it looks better, I have just learned it as I was building, for the other part of things I didn't expplain it becuase it's to caomplicated for an beginners guide, I mean, I could also make a guilde for people that can build pritty good alredey, but, I think that those people can find out how to improve themselves, I might be reflecting myself too much, but I learnd things untill a sertain level to after that just improve on myself, and I don't want to learn people that part, since that is the part that defines personal style. that's also the reason that I'm not explaining how to detail or how you can find a paleth... I also think I am more an artist than you... seeing that you connect what looks good with since and such... I really can't do that myself, I just feel like something looks good or not, I tried to not use that feeling too much in the guilds, but I think that that is what makes a good build, an Idea or an feeling you want to share or express. not some since that tells you what looks good, I have been looking for some kind of univerusl rules whilst building to make thease guides, but none of thease rules do always count, nor do I use thease rules myself, this really is just ment to give people who say they can't build a little help if they just once want to make something that looks good and people who just got started and need some basic rules to start with, I also started with rules like thease but stopped using them as I became a better builder, since my hard is telling me what to do, not my brains.

I see your point. I like such guides myself, and I'm glad you've written quite some posts like what you describe.
However, I also think Jelle's way of doing is very good too. To many people, that might actually be preferable, as Jelle will actually 'get to the point' more quickly, which is nice for people who just want some good tips instead of lots of thoughtful insights.
So I think both styles of guides are really useful.

I really feel like giving this thread a little Bump. Not a big one, no no, just a little Bump

Any suggestions for things to write about? things that you like to know how I'd do it?

(When I'm talking like that I really feel like a show-off ways too much, but, well, I think that's alredey it with finding yourself good enough to make a build guide (took me a while to finally lounch it though... I do not normally feel that good about myself...)

These guides are great, and should get a lot more attention. I only saw them today, and I'll definitely try and build something with those guides on my second screen in the (very) near future.

I started building, took a long time, am not quite finished, but can already tell the result is going to look nice, nicer than most stuff I've built yet. So, thanks again for the guide.

Can you do something on interior decorating as well? Lots of people I know told me they do outsides ok, but really suck at insides .. would be great if you could give us some tips!

I'm planning on making one, but school has been really time-taking, but I indeed hope to do an interiour one. there is one slight problem: I'm not really good with them. (mostly becuase my build style makes it really quite dificulult) I might even ask some friend of mine if he has got some more things to add... since, well, my interiours aren't the best...

EDIT: currently building the exteriour for the house for the interiour build guide, it's looking REALLY good so far

Advanced landscaping and interior:
Part 1: landscaping tips:

There you go, a nice house with some fairly good looking landscaping around it. Indeed, I’ve already finished all exterior: that’s because I have only got tips for the planning, which is way easier to imagine if you can see the end result.

This is what you see when you start at the beginning of the path: you can see some fairly good looking trees, a bit of a bridge and just a smidge of the house. That’s so the first impression is as good as possible and you’ve got a grand reveal at the moment you walk over the path. You walk over the bridge and see some parts of the house; walk around the tree and BANG you’re hit with the build at its best angle. Every time you walk over the path, the screenshot I opened with is the first thing you see. The technique is really quite simple. You make a path that at one point shows the build off from its best angle, to after that make sure that you aren’t able to see the build before that point, like I did with that tree.

Following the path you get here. You arrive at a small area that’s surrounded with trees, to make it look a little more safe. Besides, your eyes are tricked, since you aren’t able to see the full build, and your eyes think it’s way smaller than it actually is. So when you enter the interior (which we’ll make later this guide) it feels like it’s properly sized since it will be off scale with the exterior - but that’s something we’ll discuss in the second part.

Here is the back side of the landscaping. Because I wanted the house on the side of the hill instead of on top of it, I needed to make the house all over on one side of the residence and the top of the hill at the other side. And because of that I needed a few cliffs to make the landscaping go next to the path properly. There’s only one slight problem: small cliffs won’t ever look really good, so I needed to make these cliffs look like they’re bigger than they are. I achieved that by placing a small tree next to the cliffs, and bigger ones on top, in exactly the same style, to make it look like the cliffs are as high as the trees on top. I don’t exactly know why this works, but I do know it does.

This is really quite easy: be sure you can’t see all of a build at once, no matter what angle you’re looking at, be sure you always see at least one tree (or something) in front of the build. I sadly wasn’t able to do that with one side, which automatically became the least good looking side of the build.

Last but not least, DON’T do this, I am always annoyed when I see something like that, and there are so many other options: I made cliffs at the side of the build, but if you really want a whole res that won’t look good, so I’d suggest making it like this:


This is from my Utopia project (it’s still secret what it’s going to be) and it just looks ways better. It’s still a straight line, but it feels a little more supported and it feels a little better from the inside. It isn’t that hard to do, and it really helps your build a lot…

Part 2: Interior:
Now, it’s time to do the interior. First off something you might have noticed already. This house is bigger than both in the beginning of the guide; that’s so that an interior actually fits in. This is about the smallest size for a complete aesthetic interior, if you’re looking for a practical one (auto furnace, storage etc.), that’s not what this guide is meant for.
Anyway, it’s time to do the first step of making the interior: imagining who lives there; why they live there; how they live there. I suggest already doing that at the moment you start the exterior, but it’s really necessary for the interior. I imagine that an old man lives in here; he used to live in a forest like this, then he moved to the city to his girlfriend, married, got two daughters, and he was all happy… but then a car hit his car and killed his wife and both daughters. He didn’t know what to do now, but then his nostalgia kicked in and he wanted to go back to that forest. He ordered to build this house and he moved in, now living like his dad did in his childhood. (You don’t need to think of as much as I just did, but I have done this such a lot of times I can’t not come up with stories like this…)

So, this is what we’ve got, an empty shell. The first thing we’re going to do is planning the floor height (which is really obvious if you’ve got the windows all at the same height) to plan the staircase next, since that needs a lot of space.

(The glowstone is to make it more visible) Okay, now it’s time to make the plain floors…

There we go, as you can see, this here is really quite a small place. This really is as big as I was able to make it. Making an interior isn’t that different from making exterior. Do you remember the first guide? Framing one block out from the walls and detail it. (with a contrasting block here and there.) If the logs are too big to frame with, I’d suggest using fences, for the ceiling with a floor above it: place logs as the framing to after that place half slabs as the filler. It’s still flat from above, so you can place whatever roof material you like on top of it, but from underneath it looks structured and detailed. I have used that technique in just about every build I did the interior of.

So, what’s next? I’d suggest furnish and detail every room, so, let’s start with the smallest: the kitchen:

There we go, an easy and small kitchen; I placed a row of upside down slabs and stairs to break up the texture a little bit. Additionally there are snow layers inside item frames representing doors for storage space; a detector rail on top of a furnace to represent a little cooking space; an anvil as extractor hood and a flower pot and iron pressure plates to jazz it all up a little bit more. “Sadly” for the person who lives here there’s no fridge, so he needs to go out hunting every day to get all his food ready.

Next room, Bedroom:

I think this was the fastest I made something to show off. Again, I didn’t have the space to make the walls one block behind the framing, but I tried to achieve that depth using stairs in the walls. I made a little closet for cloths, but a single man won’t need that much space for that. I also made a little study, not too much, just to do the monthly finances. Detailed that using the same techniques as the kitchen. Also, the bed: really easy, placed two next to each other and added a little stairs trim next to one side to make it feel a little more like a big, handmade bed, as you’d expect in this house.

Last room, the Livingroom,

Last room, Livingroom, this here is I think the easiest one, I made a fireplace using the grey blocks and a magma block, a little coat rack using tripwire hooks, a chair, a table with a cup on top (to make it look like he is home) and added a painting to add a little colour and a little more detail.
I think that’s all there is to the interior. But there are a few more things to do. Set the time to night/wait for the night and try to find all windows that aren’t used in the interior (because you usually don’t have the space to) and place redstone torches behind them (so that you can’t see them) this is to make it all feel a little more alive.
“Now I’m done?” Well, kind off, But if you, like me, have got a little more space to play with next to the exterior, you can add a little more detail to it.

This is something I’d add. He’s got a fireplace, right? Well, where does he dry his wood? Here, at a little place I made him to do so. There are more things like this you can add; this is all I had space for, but if you’re in a non-residence world you can also add details like a truck standing next to the start of the path, a chopped-down tree still lying to be collected... people leave hints at the places they’ve been, and it’s the task of a builder to recreate those things to make a place feel more alive.

That’s all from me this guide, I hope you learned something. I want to thank 607 for helping me out with my Englisch and my little sister for helping me doing the interiour. Thank you very much for reading.

Let's just give this thread a little bump

It's been some time ago since I bumped it, so, let's do it again.
Also, Tips for me, as a builder, would be gladly apriciated

After completing this build here: http://imgur.com/a/E9WBu I feel a lot more confident with the modern style, so, I thought I’d do a Modern designing & interior one.

Modern ex- and interior:

W00t, 1.12 is finally out on EMC, and we now are able to make some brilliant modern builds with the blocks it has to offer. Where to even start with the possibilities? Let’s just craft some of those blocks, and start building.
Well, no. That’s the first mistake people make when doing modern designs, only really good builders can start with building directly. You should first come up with a good design. There are many ways to do that, but I suggest starting by finding some paper and pencils: it’s time to raid the nearest printer, and get some paper going.
Okay, now that that’s all done, It’s time to come up with some ideas: what shapes do you like; what kind of modern building do you want to have; all those questions. If you lack inspiration I suggest looking up Zaha Hahid, Rem Koolhaas, Alvar Aalto or some other architect's buildings in google images, that always helps me anyway…
Usually I just start drawing. But I can imagine you not being able to see what I’m seeing with a hand-drawn picture, so I am going to use SketchUp for this one. I just want to point out you should rather not use minecraft, since it’s kind of hard to quickly draw a shape and say, mhm maybe that a few blocks left, that a bit up, now that a bit down, even if you’ve got worldedit.

This is the shape I came up with for this one, The style kind of reminds me of 1920’s conceptual buildings, some people don’t like it and I’m fine with that, but I’m going to continue in this style anyway.
Okay, so, what are the techniques to make a kind of good looking shape? First of I suggest finding out what kind of floor you want to have, this one here is (obviously) an L shape, which, together with the T shape, is the go-to shape for easy modern building. You can also experiment with something else, but I suggest doing that after you’ve made a few houses to get the techniques rolling. If you continue making the shape by giving it height, there are more things to consider: first of you don’t want the build to be flat at any point, it doesn’t matter from what angle you are looking, there always needs to be a lot of depth in it. If you’ve got a balcony like I have, be sure that the part of the build under it isn’t at the same depth as the entrance to the balcony, that’d make it look too flat.
If you’re really struggling with getting to a shape I’d suggest thinking in two kind of shapes, horizontal shapes and vertical ones; since we’re using Minecraft we’ve only got squares, so I suggest building the build out of big clearly vertical and big clearly horizontal rectangles - a building usually is made out of an odd number of both. After you’ve got that you can start adding the smaller details to that shape - of course, not too small, it is Minecraft...

Okay, now it’s time for the first stage of detailing, adding colour. Right now my build is plain white, and even though some people argue that modern builds are plain white, they really aren’t, rather, you don’t use a lot of colours.
About every modern build has got a pallet with three colours: white, a tone of gray, and an accent colour. That last one is really important and is what can make a build look good or look bad, but that’s not the colour we’re starting with, we’re starting by deciding what things we want to make gray and what we want to make white. (so that all shapes have got a colour)
If you’ve followed the previous steps you’ve got an odd number of horizontal and an odd number of vertical shapes, I now also suggest making an odd number gray and an odd number white. I also suggest making more vertical than horizontal shapes gray, which means for me that I will have 2 horizontal white shapes, a gray one, 2 vertical gray ones, and a white one. As simple as that.

Okay, now it’s time for the more tricky parts: deciding what you want to be your accent colour. I suggest going with brown (wooden planks), red, orange or blue. I’m going for orange this time, because I think that fits the style better (1920’s).
If you’ve got brown I suggest revisiting what’s gray and what’s white, and maybe make a whole wall brown; if you’ve got a real bright colour, like I do, this colour will only be used in the actual detailing. You can draw it into your drawing as well, but that’s a little too much work to do in SketchUp for me, although I did do it in the original hand drawn one:


(That’s the first and last time I’m going to share one of my drawings, I hope you’re happy with it )
[End of part 1/3]

Okay, now it’s time to start building in Minecraft, finally… First of it’s just building the shapes with the right dimensions. I won’t bother you about that, but, after that it’s time to build a little bit of detail in. It’s time for the second stage of detailing, placing in the windows and the colour splashes; I’d also add the doors in at this stage.


as you can see, this build is enormous, but don’t worry, the steps also work with a smaller build, but I currently have got way too much time, and I just want to build something. Anyways, as you can see I have put on quite a bit of colour. That’s because you want to have around 10 - 20% of the blocks to be the colour splash, less than that and it’ll look a little too gray (I feel like I’m on the edge of that with my one) and more than that and it’ll look too colourful.
For the windows, I suggest not doing anything but replacing parts of the walls with panes, no extra detail required. As you can see all windows are either massive or really quite small, I’d try to always do that, but as always, just do the thing you think looks best.
I’d also try to not connect any textures, that means, no flat surface with two textures on it. If you want to do a texture/colour change I always recommend giving it all a little depth and not having the textures being connected.
A little extra note is that I’m building it at ground level: I’m going to move it all five blocks up later on. If you’re not building with worldedit, I suggest placing the whole build up 2-10 blocks (depends on the size of your garden).

Now it’s time for the interior. Just like I said in the previous guide, it’s usually best to plan out the staircase first, only, it isn’t that difficult to find out where mine is going to go... Here it is if you’re wondering:

(I know it’s way too orange, but all walls were it, so I had to use it in the walls…)
Let’s continue… Living room.


Okay, there we got it, as you can see, it’s huge. Well, all of this build is, that’s just because I’ve got nothing better to do…
Anyway, as you can see, I have used quartz as the main block; in case you’ve chosen wood as your accent colour, I suggest using that, but in my case quartz simply is the best option… Of course I also made a television, that is really easy now in 1.12: just some concrete with an anvil under it.
As you can see I split this room into two rooms, one for just hanging around and one especially made for watching television. That’s something I suggest doing with modern interiors, not separating the big rooms you’ve got. Modern building is about creating space, and by blocking some part of with a wall you only make it look less grand, so, only do that if you really want to separate something; otherwise, don’t.
The last thing I did was adding some greenery. That’s something I always like to add, and there are many many ways of doing that, but I guess this one is the best for this case: since I needed a little bit of light poking through, I placed End Rods under the leave blocks. Doesn’t that look weird? uhhmm… nope.

Now it’s time for the second big hall, this one is going to be the dining room and kitchen.

Right, I made a kitchen just like the kitchen from the previous guide, just with different blocks. Additionally there is a dining table with some fancy seats. The seats use a little redstone trick, since the floor is “only” two thick, I can’t just place levers under the blocks, so I had to be smart: there is a redstone torch placed under the stair, but if you place the trapdoors and then the stair they won’t go up, you need to first place a solid block at the place you want the stair to be, then the trapdoors go up, then you need to remove the block and replace it with a stair to give it the seat look.
There is one more thing I did, thinking ahead: making a staircase downwards. of course, this seems kind of useless at first, but I want the rooms underneath to be sleeping rooms, and, you don’t want to need to go through a sleeping room in order to get to the next one, so I added a little stair so that you can come to the other two.


Rightio, the master bedroom, I tried really hard to make it look some kind of good, but I always find it really difficult to make an “alive” modern sleeping room. Maybe someone else can help me a little with this, because it looks kind of good, but it isn’t lively, I wouldn’t say “okay, let’s go and sleep in that bed” or something, it’s just not pleasing enough…
The other one, just the same things, but obviously for a child:

As I said, if there is anyone who knows what I’m doing wrong here, feel free to say it wherever I will see it (well, kind of...)

The last room will be a gigantic storage, since I did barely make any, so the people who live here will need it…

This is as easy as it gets, using trapdoors as shelves as usual, I placed a few chests on top of them to really give it that storage feel, made some big closets using iron doors, placed a few chests behind it to give it a little more of a storage feel again, and finally added a little table, since I just feel like that’s needed for a storage like this…
[End of part 2/3]