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Minecraft Map of Northwestern Campus Printed In 3D

Posted by timothy on from the rock-hammer-for-scale dept.

erich666 writes "Ben Rothman has created a five-foot-wide scale model of most of Northwestern University, where he was a sophomore this past year. This campus model is unique: it is the first modeled in Minecraft and then printed on a 3D printer. It is also the largest Minecraft 3D print to date, and will be on display in the main lobby of the largest building on campus in a few weeks. Ben began in November and spent about 600 hours recreating the campus. He notes that "this felt like playing a game more than a modeling task." The cost of the print material was about $2000 to $2500, well less than the cost of the display case being built for it (admittedly, labor costs are included for the case). The free Mineways program was used for export. It can help upload an exported Minecraft model to Shapeways, i.materialise, or other 3D print service. Models cost as little as $5."

14 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Poor guy by C_amiga_fan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wasting primetime college years not getting laid.

    --
    FREE magazine : http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prior/
    1. Re:Poor guy by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's a tech college. There's no women there.

    2. Re:Poor guy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      RIT has a saying: The girls are like parking spaces. The good ones are handicapped or taken.

      Oh god, I'm going to hell.

    3. Re:Poor guy by vlm · · Score: 3, Insightful

      My experience in a similar situation was the 99% female nursing college was about 100 feet from the electronics lab building. There was a biz school with excellent M/F ratio a couple blocks away, but the nurses outnumbered us guys, so never bothered with the bean counters. Technically there were no women, you had to walk at least 100 feet. The key isn't how many women are signed up, its how many women per square mile in the greater campus area. Are there "tech schools" out there that are sausage fests surrounded by 100 miles of nervous sheep with no NEARBY women?

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    4. Re:Poor guy by Chees0rz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Beware of this. As an RIT alumn I can tell you that this causes a very strange social dynamic. It's kind of creepy. (OK - it is continually getting better)

      One time... i witnessed a group of students walking towards GCCIS (the computing college). This group was composed of about 10 guys, and 1 female (very typical at RIT). The girl was in the back of the pack.

      The first two guys reach the doors and grab the handles. They pull the doors open and stand to the side. One by one, the guys stand to the side until the single female is directly in front of the door in an aisle of 'gentlemen.' With a look of horror, she walks through.

      She was BEHIND them all, but they all knew she was there and being geeks had no idea how to act. Creepy shit like this happened all the time.

    5. Re:Poor guy by benthemonkey · · Score: 2

      600 hours, 100 of which were over spring break with a friend (50 hrs each) = 500 hrs. My calculation had me spending 14 hrs/weekend (which is somewhat accurate). 6 months = roughly 25 weeks = 350 hrs on weekends. Now I have 150 hours spent over 25*5=125 weekdays. That's basically an hour a day, which I easily took out of the time I usually spend messing around online / playing video games. In conclusion, I'm rockin' a 3.5

  2. cheater by demonbug · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't see any tell-tale creeper scars in there. I bet he wasn't even mapping in survival mode; cheater.

  3. Finally! by smooth+wombat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A site which doesn't use that craptacularly insecure Flash to display simple pictures.

    And on one page no less!

    Maybe that supposed Mayan prediction is coming true after all.

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  4. waste by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While this would be a cool spare-time project, I don't really see how using Minecraft to model something is even a remotely useful skill that a school would want to teach, let alone spend $5000+ on. He should have spent the 600 hours learning a real CAD or modeling software package. 600 hours is enough to get really good at just about anything. Seems like a waste of school resources to me. Flame away.

    1. Re:waste by Lehk228 · · Score: 2

      in 40-50 years all standard construction will be designed out of 1m^3 cube templates, really not a bad idea from an insulation and materials standpoint which will be good because the only CAD program left will be minecraft Pro version 37

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    2. Re:waste by ScottSClark · · Score: 2

      This is basically just a PR stunt. Nothing wrong with that. The kid shows he's a diligent worker and able to bend existing tools to his needs. Minecraft gets some PR. Northwestern gets some PR. The whole "3D printer" thing has another example. If this gets the kid a summer internship or a leg up in the job market, then it did everything it needed to do. For the rest of us, it's just "cool". To be honest, I was ready to scoff that he cheated by just doing the buildings in 3D but laying them out by hand (Minecraft doesn't do angles). But he even laid it out within the constraints of the tool. As a guy who used to hand draw circles in pixels on screen, I can appreciate the level of effort there :)

  5. Re:Copyright question by jdgeorge · · Score: 2

    Interesting question, but there are numerous architects, and this would be protected as "fair use" for a number of reasons. See Google Maps, Google Earth, etc for similar representation of copyright-protected architecture.

  6. Re:northwestrn does not let anyone in even f footb by jank1887 · · Score: 2

    or maybe they set the bar just high enough to rule out those who can't spell the name of the school.

  7. Re:But the trees! by erich666 · · Score: 3, Informative

    It turns out that Minecraft trees tend to snap off when 3D printed at that scale. The trunks are usually too thin to stand up to the model cleaning process.