How To: Create rounded planks (Part 1)

Adding detail to a scene is both beautiful and enhancing. It conveys more than just the objective and allows the player to dive deeper into the moment. Most of the time, we rely on props to take on that role. But blocks, bent and pushed the right way, can add detail just as much.

Fredelas came up with a way to push blocks into the shape of rounded planks. The result is a clean and straight plank that gives even more detail when applying a different texture to its sides.

We begin by getting an idea of how this creation is composed, in order to understand how we need to push the blocks into place. A single plank occupies the space of 3 blocks width and 1 voxel height, but requires the area of 5x2 blocks per plank, affecting a total of 7x4 blocks. Let's break this down.

The following picture shows two rows of the same planks. I will use the upper row to color the blocks used to make the planks in their natural shape. I do that simply to illustrate the blocks that are actually being used and the way they are affecting their surrounding blocks. The lower row is used to demonstrate the final shapes of the blocks in their final stage.

I have colored the blocks used to create the lower row of planks.

These colored blocks have been pushed significantly in order to create the unique shape they now have. The picture below depicts the position of the natural blocks as they would appear before they are transformed into the planks.

It becomes visible pretty quickly that the general approach to this is an alternating use of blocks from the top and the bottom. Beginning on the left, the pink block is pushed down and stretched out. The orange blocks on both ends form one part of the rounded edge while the purple part is yet another layer of that rounded edge.

If we were to continue using blocks from the top, the gaps between the planks would be huge. In order to use the blocks more efficiently, we switch to the voxels below. Similarly to the top, the green block in the center is used to compose the major part of the plank. It is pushed upwards and stretched, while the blue and light orange blocks on its sides are used to create the rounded edges again.

Notice that the middle line of blocks is not used at all. It is required as buffer space when pushing the lines of voxels above and below into shape.

Since a row of planks will use the blocks above and below the space the plank will actually occupy, it affects a lot more blocks than one might think. In order to get a better idea of the amount of blocks affected by this composition, I have added a black and white block grid around the blocks used to illustrate that.

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