Topic category: General discussion
Introduction
Hello, I will be sharing some modeling programs I have had time to test and learn how to use. I will provide the best to my knloage on the pros and cons of each program in hopes to help you find a program that is right for you and your project. I have had time to learn Cubik Studio and Block Bench, I am currently learning more about Block Bench and I will update the review if needed. I would love to hear your feedback on your own experiances with this or other software that I have missed.
Cubik Studio
Cubik has grate proformance for blocks and works the best for MCreator blocks and items. Its not hard to learn how to UV map and texture and has a easy layout for beginers. It can be buggy with rotation of objects at times but supports angled blocks and more. Its paid software and can be expensive for some however it is the best program I have found for use for modeling for blocks to use in MCreator.
PROS
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A great program to model blocks and items with.
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Extremely easy to UV map blocks and items.
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Auto culling works great.
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Support for disabling block faces to improve performance on blocks.
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Auto disabling faces work great.
CONS
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Its paid software.
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Not great for making mobs.
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No support for animation tools.
Block Bench
Block bench works well for making entities, it lacks in making blocks and items due to performance flaws, however, it has built-in animation software for your entities and may open more doors to the MCreator community in the future. You can get the program for free and updates for the program is free to. Funding for development comes from donations so if you want to support the development of the program you can donate to them.
PROS
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Free software
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Free updates
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A great tool to make mobs with
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Can group cubes together.
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Supports pivot point adjustments.
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Looks to have built-in animation and bone tools for entities.
CONS
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Does not have support for disabling block textures that I could see.
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UV Mapping is hard to work with.
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Culling for blocks seemed to have issues when I worked with the auto cull option.
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Not great for making blocks or items.
MrCrayFish's Model Creator
This program allows you to create block models for free, I have had mixed feedback on the program form my community some saying they had issues using it some saying it worked great I will need to spend some time testing it before I make a full review on this product.
PROS
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Free software for Mac, Linux, and PC
CONS
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Unknown
Nice review. I will link this review to users asking for guide on selecting a modeler from now on ;)
Duo to the blockbench update,its entity file no longer works on mcreator(this is what I see and it’s the problem now I facing)
Entity file mean .java file
Open a support ticket and attach the java file you are importing in the ticket. I doubt the update has broken support with MCreator.
I tested a penguin last week and had no issues other than needing to tweak some things with rotation, I plan to make a tutorial series on mob creation and a small bit of coding to set up the animation better.
Ok can you Download it for free?
Is there anything easy?
Cubik Studio is paid software however the other two are free.
For modeling programs that are not for game development like Maya or Blender, they are very easy to lean with no knowledge of creating models. I would actually suggest using these before you try more advanced software like Blender because of two reasons.
1. they are made for Minecraft.
2. They have most of the settings if not all of them ready to go for modeling and requires little knowledge on texturing baking effect etc.
Software like blender is complex and will not take a day to learn however Blender will also work but its way more advanced and probably not the best software to jump into if you have not used it before. Blender is also free and supports many other games but requires time to learn and master.
This is true, Blender is not a software one would learn in a day :D
you cant install mrcrayfish's model editor on windows, thats a con
I just downloaded the universal jar download and clicked on it and it opened the program.
I am running Windows 10 (64 bit). Can you tell me what version of windows and if you have java installed? That may help determine if it has issues on other windows platforms.
I because it is run through a JAR file you may need to run it using Java SE Binary I think it would be the javaw.exe you would configure it to open as on older platforms like Windows 7 if I can remember right.
The location will vary depending on where you have installed java most cases it can be found under C:/Program Files/Java/JRE (Build)/bin/javaw.exe
You can configure.JAR files to open using it by right-clicking the JAR clicking properties, under the general tab there is a button that says change next to the words "open with" click the button. A window will appear with some applications if you don't have java up there then click more apps and if still nothing then click the text that says "Look for another app on this PC" navigate to the location where your javaw.exe is installed and try to use that if that does not work it may be the one that says java.exe however I remember it being javaw so try that first.
If it still does not work try uninstalling all versions of java and reinstalling JAVA SE this may fix any installation issues and will also update java at the same time if there are updates.
Hope that helps let me know how it goes.
@klemen
I have tried several times to learn blender, I can never wrap my head around it, way to complex for this fuzzy mind.
Con for Crayfish, you cant make mobs in it, only blocks