ArcGIS for Minecraft

Sorry about the title, I tried ArcMinecraft too but that was even worse.

Earlier this year I mentioned that I thought Minecraft would be a great tool for planning.

So while I was building my Fort out by the sea, he went back to restoring the hillside so it not only looked good, but could support trees, flowers and bushes. We talked about creating a rail line between our two forts and he wanted to make sure it was routed around area’s he wanted to protect.

Seems so simple, for the public they don’t care about BIM or TIN or DEM. They just want to showcase their concerns and move on. Minecraft seems to be a great tool (Yes I know Voxel.js is a great option as well but let’s be honest, Minecraft is Minecraft) for accomplishing this but how to get the data in?

A couple of weeks ago, Ulf and I had a hangout where we talked about getting OSM and other public data into Minecraft using FME.

So it’s interesting that at the Esri UC, Mansour Raad had a talk on using the ArcGIS Geoprocessing to export data out of ArcGIS into Minecraft. It was awesome stuff and appeared easy to work with. Well, he’s blogged about it and you too can follow along and export your GIS data into Minecraft.

One day my son tells me Hey dad, I think I can build one of your worlds in Minecraft”. What he meant about my world is a GIS world that I render using ArcMap. So I started thinking about this and wondered if I too can do this, but programatically.

Now, none of this stuff is productized yet, but if you take a little time and be patient, you can export your worlds into Minecraft and get your kids off your back (bless your heart). Check out the GitHub repository and get crafting (that’s what the kids tell me to say but I feel like they’re trolling me).


Tags
Thoughts

Date
July 15, 2013