Minecraft City so large Blender can't handle it with only 2 skyscrapers (PLEASE HELP!

[AVR_ENTERTAINMENT]

@Craig Jones

Are you animating just pure animation, or are you exporting to a game engine? Lots of trick can be done with instances to build up your geo, and then make an instance of the whole building. The idea of bringing in the whole building could work as a group that you append in, and then you can make instances of that group.

Are you using as simple of geo as possible in this, as in a real default cube? What are your system specs? Do you have a sample file to look at?

This is for an animated Minecraft movie that will go on YouTube when it is completed. I am using the Blender default cube for each block, and I add the Minecraft textures directly from the default Minecraft resource pack. I do not have a sample file, but it’s simply cubes with Minecraft textures, and each individual cube must keep its own instance of that texture when the building is joined together. My system specs are as follows:

OS: Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
RAM: 16 GB
Processor: Intel Core i5-4430 @ 3.00GHz
Graphics Card: MSi Afterburner R7 265

[Craig_Jones]

Look into render layers, you can set up layers with instances of the buildings and with portions of your ‘land’ and such, and use the Combine Z option to render them and composite them back together.

[AVR_ENTERTAINMENT]

Wait, so each different block type is in a separate layer? Sorry, I’m a bit confused here… I don’t mess with node setups much…

[Craig_Jones]

image each block there is a building in a separate layer, that way you render them and composite back in

[AVR_ENTERTAINMENT]

Like I said, I haven’t really figured out compositing and nodes and stuff yet… could you maybe link me to a tutorial explaining how to do this?

[AVR_ENTERTAINMENT]

I figured out how to do it without using nodes! I UV unwrapped the cube, set the texture coordinates in the image editor, and when I duplicated and joined the blocks the texture stayed relative to each cube!

[AVR_ENTERTAINMENT]

Well… I got it figured out, I built the entire skyscraper, joined it, and used Alt+D to duplicate it, then made 3 rows each with 75 skyscrapers. I joined that result together so there was only one object in the scene and, lo and behold, it made my ENTIRE COMPUTER FREEZE. I thought the problem was I had too many objects?? Someone please help!

[liero]

you may have filled a lot of memory with geometry and that can kill your system, but even if not, having a lot of objects can also kill your viewport performance… the best way to handle it should be creating a group -just join each unique building and press Ctrl+G- so you can add them as instances with Shift+A; also dupliverts, duplifaces or particles can work perfectly fine

here’s a quick setup with a simple plane + 2 array modifiers and the duplifaces option enabled, also a few manually placed instances and a plane with a particles system, total 585.000 blocks and it renders in a second https://db.tt/qOT7aClW

[AVR_ENTERTAINMENT]

So an instance would be like I said before - basically a ghost object, but still appears in the render?

[AVR_ENTERTAINMENT]

If I use Shift+D to duplicate an instance, will that ruin it? Or do I have to use Alt+A for each building?

[AVR_ENTERTAINMENT]

Alright, eight towers now. As mentioned before, each row of buildings includes at least 75 towers. Every building in this screenshot is a group instance.

If I select all the buildings and press Shift+D to get the row done faster,will I be slowing the scene down?