3D-Print Your Favorite Minecraft World!

You might have heard of a program called Mineways, it has the ability to extract 3d models from, all our favorite game, Minecraft. In this instructable we will extract a 3d model and print it with Shapeways. You can offcourse use your own 3d printer, if you got one.

Have fun printing!

Download and install MineWays

Mineways should find your saves automatically but if it doesn't, here's how you find them.

You can also download a save, it could be a world containing a great version of Minas Tirith that you want to print, use your imagination. You would put that save file in the folder shown above and create a 3d model of it with Mineways.

When you have opened Mineways, choose "Open World" and choose the name of the world that you would like to print. You will then see a birdseye view of the world and use left and right mouse buttons to move around and to select a part of the world for printing. The "Max height" will help you to remove clouds and other obstacles in the air, "Lower depth" is essentially the same but it removes everything below a certain depth.

When you are done, save the world as a .zip (this is the format shapeways likes to receive there files). A .zip file will be created automatically if it is checked when exporting.

You might want to see how the world turned out before sending it to Shapeways.
Windows 10 has a 3d viewer already installed that you can use to look at the model called "3D Builder".

Now you are ready to print your Minecraft world! upload the .zip to Shapeways and buy the print or if you have a 3d printer, print it yourself. If Shapeways gives you a complaint about the wall thickness being to thin, create a new bigger model or increase the wall size with Mineways. Trying with a bigger model will almost always solve these problems but remember that the price will also increase. Try to tweak the settings for your model to get a good price, work smart.

I hope you found this interesting, you can also export the model for use as a 3d model for video work. I am speaking about some of the fan made videos on YouTube.

Take care!