Minecraft Forum: MCEdit: Minecraft World Editor (Compatible with MC Beta 1.8!) - Minecraft Forum

WARNING: YOU MUST EXIT MINECRAFT COMPLETELY BEFORE EDITING.
If you leave Minecraft running while using MCEdit, the clash will corrupt your saves. Why this happens. If you ignore this warning, your map will become laggy and your character will stop moving.

Before You Reply: Be sure to include the exact version number of MCEdit (don't say "latest"), the exact version number of the Minecraft game (don't say "latest"), your Windows/OS X/Linux version, and anything present in the MCEdit log window (or the Console utility on OS X) at the time of your issue. Thanks!

What's new:

stable33:
- Added "Long Distance Mode" and "Fly Mode" options. When enabled together, these make the controls more Minecraft-like.
- Some long running operations can be canceled now.
- Improved speed and memory usage of the Minecraft Server-based chunk generator.
- Attempted to fix the "Loading imports..." crash

stable32:
- Rebuilt using pygame 1.9.1. Should fix mouse problems during the file dialogs. Windows users must update manually by downloading a new setup.exe or .zip to fix it.

stable31:
- Added spawner choices for Enderman, Silverfish, and CaveSpider
- Move Spawn Point tool now checks your spawn point according to Minecraft's weird rules: y=63 and y=64 must not both be air, and you must have three air blocks above the spawn point.
- Move Spawn Point tool now offers to fix the blocks around your spawn point to make it fit the rules. This cannot be undone (yet).
- Fixed an issue with rotating copied items and later finding them scrambled.
- Tried to fix an issue with mouse control failing during the "Import a schematic or level..." dialog.

stable30:
- Added all three variations of hidden silverfish blocks: Stone, Cobblestone, Stone Brick
- Added graphics for all four kinds of stairs
- Added rotation info for the new stairs, Chests, and Vines
- Replacing different types of stairs will preserve the stairs' orientation.

- Fixed the Move Player tool not working correctly
- Fixed the Topsoil brush not working inside caves

- Fixed a problem where the window wouldn't remember its size correctly
- Fixed a problem where the mouse control became unusable after resizing the window
- Copy/Import operations now create chunks and copy blocks in a single pass
- Added more progress bars

stable29:
- Added Creative/Survival toggle to Create New World and World Info windows.
- Fixed a problem with missing trees in the chunk generator.
- Move Player tool now correctly moves players to and from the Nether
- Move Player tool now jumps to the dimension the player is in.

- Fixed a startup error in reloadVersions

stable26:
- Added Copy and Paste commands. Shortcuts are Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.
- Up to 10 copied items are listed on the right side of the screen
- "Export Schematic" changed to "Copy" - to use the Export function, click the Save button by one of the copied items
- added progress bars for some long-running operations

- setup.exe now has an option to install in Fixed Install mode, placing your settings and exports in your Documents folder.
- Added the option to generate chunks using the Minecraft Server. When you choose the Chunk tool and press Create, you're given a few options.
- Added a "Classic Water Flood" filter, which will simulate the way water used to flood in Classic. This is handy for filling the area around a boat with water, for example.
- Included Decliff filter, contributed by Minecraft Forums user DrRomz

- Delete Entities is now undoable
- Undoing a copy now correctly removes the copied tile entities
- Added an "Analyze" command to the selection and recently copied items.
- Added format and size info to the World Info panel (Ctrl-I)

- Topsoil brush doesn't improperly change the blocks at the top edge of the brush area.

Quick Links:

Download MCEdit (with adf.ly) - View an ad, then download MCEdit!
Download MCEdit - Download MCEdit directly.
FAQ and Common Problems - Read these if it doesn't work the first time.
Old Versions - Try some of these if the latest version doesn't work. Be sure to report your findings.
Contact me! - Write the author with any questions or concerns.


Tools - Learn about the different tools
Companion Programs - Other software that can be used alongside MCEdit
Tips and Tricks - A few things to keep in mind
Hall of Fame - Cool stuff you guys made with MCEdit
Filters Thread - Post and share your custom filters here.
MCSchematics.com - a schematic sharing site!

pymclevel - Level-loading library for Python. Source code included.

- MCEdit is offered under the Creative Commons Attribution;Non-Commercial;No-Derivatives license. Read the license here. MCEdit's full source code is not currently available. The source code will eventually be released under a different license.


- MCEdit has been in development since June 17, 2010. If you appreciate the work I've done, please donate!

TrynePlague has made another stellar tutorial, this time showing off the Forester filter.


About

MCEdit is a versatile map editor, designed for moving blocks from one level to another. With it, you can open a level of nearly any type and fly around in glorious 3D with multiple levels of detail! Select millions of blocks and clone them anywhere else in the level. Fill a boxy selection with the block of your choice, or replace one kind of block with another. Export blocks to a "schematic" file for later use. Import a schematic or an entire level into any world using the crane. Move the player or his spawn point. Create and and remove chunks from the world. Fill blackened areas with light. Find bugs!

Remember: Control-Z to undo, Control-S to save.



Tools
Here's a quick overview of a few of the different tools we have:

Selection: Make a selection by marking its corners. Press again to switch corners. Delete blocks or entities, or export the selection to a .schematic file.
Brush: Click to fill a shaped area with blocks. Choose brush size, shape, and type of block.
Clone: Copies the selected blocks. Click to set the copy down, then press "Clone" to clone. E R F to transform blocks.

Fill: Fills the selection with a chosen block type, optionally replacing another type. R to start replacing, E to swap materials.
Filter: Use one of the predefined filters to smooth terrain or change the topsoil, or create your own filter plugin using Python.
Crane: Import a Schematic file or an entire level. Use this to convert older levels by importing them into an Alpha world.
Player: Click to move the player. May move the player to and from the Nether. Press twice to teleport.
Spawn: Click to move the player's spawn. Not available in the Nether. Press twice to teleport.
Chunk: Create, delete, and light chunks. Prune away all of the chunks outside the selection.

Your personal schematics are kept in your Documents folder, in a folder named 'MCEdit-schematics'. These are your working copies of the default schematics included in the MCEdit download. Your personal settings for MCEdit are kept in your Documents folder, in a file 'mcedit.ini'.

There are a few Nudge buttons scattered around. To use them, click and hold down on one. While holding the mouse button, use the movement keys (defaults: WASDQZ) to move the related item around. Hold Shift to nudge further.

If you have a powerful computer, press Control-F to see farther.

Useful tips appear in the bar at the bottom of the window according to what you are doing. Read them!

A few people can't get MCEdit to start up or do anything at all. If MCEdit doesn't work for you, please post here or keep in touch via PM or e-mail. I'll try to work with you and figure out what's wrong.


FAQ and Common Problems

• General

Q: Can I use MCEdit to edit the weather/biomes/temperature/snowfall??
A: We cannot. Weather data is not stored in the save file for editing. The only thing you can do about the weather is change the random seed, which will have other side effects.

Q: What are those red and yellow boxes?
A: The red boxes are Entities, which include monsters and dropped items. The yellow boxes are TileEntities, which include the contents of Chests, Dispensers, and Furnaces. Entities cannot be edited. Some TileEntities can be edited; double-click on one to edit.

Q: I deleted some chunks, but now they won't come back!
A: Use the Chunk tool's Delete command to completely delete the chunks. They will regenerate the next time you play Minecraft.

Q: Are you going to support <insert mod name here>?
A: MCEdit is only intended to support the base Minecraft game. However, I've been working on supporting the Cubic Chunks mod and its custom save file format, and any blocks added by a ModLoader mod.

Q: Why is there a warning to close Minecraft whenever I use MCEdit?
A: When you click "Save & Quit to Title", Minecraft doesn't completely quit out of the world. Some important parts (the region file headers) are still in Minecraft's memory, so any changes to them will be overwritten if Minecraft is still running. This is what corrupts the world files.

• Windows

Q: Help! I can't click on things!
A: Download and reinstall the latest version of MCEdit.

Q: "The application could not start because the application configuration is incorrect" or similar
A: Install the Visual C 2008 Runtime from Microsoft.

Q: I'm getting an "Unable to load OpenGL Library" after installing / using SolidWorks.
A: Edit your PATH environment variable and remove SolidWorks' path. This fixes the problem and usually doesn't affect SolidWorks.

• Mac OS X

Q: MCEdit bounces on the dock but doesn't open.
A: Check the Console utility for error messages. "Permission Denied" means you need to extract the zip file by right clicking on it and choosing Open With -> Archive Utility. "Library not loaded" means you need to install X11. "Module not found" means you need to install python2.6 and numpy.

Q: MCEdit starts up but the colors are all wrong.
A: PowerPC Macs are not yet supported.


Credits:
Original Forester script by dudecon. Thread, Site



MCEdit: over one trillion blocks cloned

Looks alright - downloading now...

Selection tool:
Mark a selection using blue and yellow cubes. Here is a selection in progress.


A selection.


Resize a selection by dragging one of its sides.


Brush tool:
Click to place blocks in a pre-arranged formation.


Clone tool:
Quickly copy blocks within the same level. The selected blocks are cloned into the green box and will follow your cursor around until you click.


After you set down the clone (or if you have set its "Place Immediately" option) you can move it by clicking and dragging.


Fill tool:
When you pick the fill tool, choose a block to fill with. Press ENTER to confirm, or press 'R' to go into Replace mode. In Replace mode, the previous block becomes the block you're getting rid of, and it asks you to choose the block to replace with.



Crane tool:
The crane tool lets you import blocks from different sources: It can place blocks previously saved to a file by the "Export Schematic" command. It can import .inv files created by INVEdit as chests. It can import an entire level of any format right into another level. It will ask you to choose a level, world, or schematic. After you've chosen, the item you selected will appear in the green box. The blocks are fully loaded and ready to use, even though they appear slowly. Click to set it down.

Here, I've placed the destroyed city.

Click and drag to reposition, and use E R F to rotate, roll, and flip.


Press ENTER or click Import. Importing up to 64 million blocks should take less than a minute. The copy is done once you regain control of MCEdit. You should press Control-S to save your level now. The lighting recalculation for this city took about 3 minutes on a Core i5.




Chunk tool:

When you pick the Chunk tool, the visible selection is automatically expanded to cover all of the chunks it touches. Press Create to create all missing chunks in the selection, ignoring any chunks already present. Press Destroy to remove any chunks within the selection. Use Prune to keep all of the chunks in the selection, and delete the ones outside. All of these will ask you for confirmation because there's no way to undo them.

Resized to 67% (was 1110 x 826) - Click image to enlarge
The Chunk tool also lets you exploit the Minecraft Server to generate land for you. The latest server will be downloaded for you the first time you use it. To add more servers you can click Check For Updates, or you can place additional servers into the storage folder by clicking Open Folder.

Finally, you can press Relight to fix any bad lighting within the selected chunks. If other programs leave your level full of black spots, you can fix it with this.





(not pictured: Brush, Player, and Player Spawn tools, DELETE operation)

Contributed schematics:

MCSchematics.com - schematic sharing site
Floating landmasses
Floating hell islands
Minecart infinite speed boost
Dragon!
Item Machine
Dungeons and buildings
Subway Station

Recommended for use with MCEdit:

The WorldEdit Mod can import schematics directly into a running server. Tell your server admin!

Minecraft Structure Planner lets you plan out your structures on a 2D grid, view them in 3D, and export them to .schematic files.

Minecraft Note Block Studio can import and export music from and to .schematic files!

A good use for MCEdit is building redstone circuits made of many repeated components. Baezon's MCRedstoneSim helps a ton when designing these. As of v1.7, MCRedstoneSim will save circuits as schematics so you can import them with MCEdit!

Maple users can read this to find out how to export plots to .schematic format. Thanks, John May!

Someone on reddit has made a collection of programs for generating schematic files. One of them will convert images into schematics. They are all UNIX programs, but the source code is available for anyone who wants to fool around with them. Thanks, ludwigvanboltzmann!

MCEdit cannot edit your inventory. I suggest N3X15's MineEdit or Copyboy's INVEdit. INVEdit is a good complement, since it can copy your entire inventory between worlds.

MCEdit cannot edit entities, only copy them. MineEdit can be used to edit entities.

MCEdit's schematic files are in NBT format and contain a lot of the same structures you'll find in a chunk file. You can use an NBT Editor to fine-tune any entities in the schematic, for example.
NBTEdit can edit schematics.
For OS X users, NEINEdit can also edit them.
Rough documentation for the format is available.

Binvox lets you convert 3D models into .schematic files.

Minecraft itself. Build a template or pattern in Minecraft, then clone it up to a grand scale in MCEdit.

Dev Mode Texture - Just drop into MCEditData and replace the old terrain.png. (not maintained)


<!-- s:Flint and Steel: -->{SMILIES_PATH}/flintnsteel.png<!-- s:Flint and Steel: --> Tips and Tricks
If you're looking for a "Cut" command to move blocks, try doing this: Select your blocks, press 3 to clone them, and then press DELETE to remove the old ones. The blocks you selected were copied into a temporary area when you pressed 3, so you can still click to set them down and copy them. If you mess up, Control-Z to undo.

You can place an uncommon block (Sponge for example) as a layout guide to use in MCEdit, similar to a scaffold. When you're finished, Replace your guide block with Air.

You can use MCEdit to import blocks from any of the old terrain generators, including ZOMG and the spectacular Floating generator in Indev. You can also use MCEdit to make use of features of the old Classic editors, like Omen's heightmap import. Best of all, you can use INVEdit to create a chest's contents and save it as an .inv file, then import that file via MCEdit as a chest.

Replacing one solid block with another solid block (such as Dirt to Iron ore or Grass to Wood) is fast because it avoids an expensive lighting calculation. Similarly, replacing a transparent block with another one (such as Air to Glass, or Air to any of the transparent feature-blocks like rails, levers, doors, and redstone) is fast. Finally, replacing Ice with Water and vice versa is also fast because they have the same transparency value.

You can't see them in MCEdit, but entities in the selection will be copied along with the blocks. This has the hidden caveat of sometimes creating more monsters than you wanted.

For programmers wanting to get their procedurally-made blocks into the game without learning the level format, MCEdit can import raw arrays of blocks. Make sure the array indices are ordered y,z,x (where the x coordinate varies the fastest when stepping through the array) and name the file with the array's dimensions. For historical reasons, the dimensions should appear in the filename in the order x,z,y. This feature emerges from the method used to import Classic levels without using knowledge of the Java serialization protocol.


[>>-i>] Controls:

    WASD                    - Move
    Q / Z                   - Altitude
    SPACE                   - Stop
    
    Right-Click             - Toggle Look-Mode
    
    Right-Click and Drag    - Quick Look
    
    Left-Click              - Use Tool
    1-9                     - Select Tool
    Mousewheel              - Change Tool Distance
    
    E                       - Rotate Blocks / Swap Materials
    R                       - Roll Blocks / Replace Blocks
    F                       - Flip Blocks 
    
    ESCAPE                  - Holster Tools
    DELETE                  - Remove Selected Blocks
    
    F1-F5                   - Open World1-World5
    O                       - Open Level...
    N                       - Create World...
    Control-S               - Save World
    
    Control-F               - Change view distance
    
    Alt-F4                  - Leave
    
    Control-Z               - Undo

Open and save the following formats, compressed or non:
(saving not guaranteed)

Alpha Creative/Survival/Multiplayer (level.dat + folders)

Classic Indev (*.mclevel)
Classic Creative/Survival (*.mine, server_level.dat) **

The two formats above can be imported using the Crane, plus these:

INVEdit inventory file (*.inv) - imports as a chest
Schematic (*.schematic) - created by MCEdit, MCRedstoneSim, or mce.py

Caveats:

If your Classic level fails to load, or loads with the blocks all
out of order, put the dimensions of the map into the filename, e.g.
server_level_256_256_128.dat.

This error has a possible fix:

Quote

Support for non-English computers and foreign character sets is shaky. For best results, put the MCEdit folder directly into your C:\.

Creating and deleting chunks will save them to disk immediately.

Cannot resize finite levels.

You can use the replace tool on an older level before importing it for finer control over block conversion.

There is no conversion between the old Indev and the older Creative/Survival.
Take caution when copying between them.


Files that have been edited by INVEdit or NBTEdit (or perhaps any other .NET program) occasionally fail to load. This is because of quirks in the gzip code in python and .NET. To get around this, use an archive program like 7-zip to decompress the files before importing them - MCEdit can read uncompressed files just fine.

After increasing the window size, the mouse control becomes nearly unusable. To get around this, just restart MCEdit after resizing the window.

Twin cities generated by Parthon and destroyed by Blaster. Platform icons borrowed from minecraftwiki.net.

Here's a quick review:
It took a while to download as it was over 8mb, so I looked inside the files and saw there were a lot of files.
After that I decided to run it, as you said, it is really slow, and it almost crashed once.
And also because it is slow, it is also hard to control.
But I think that if you work hard you might be able to speed it up, and improve it.
Once this is done, I think that it might be actually a good program.

Hall of Fame

Computers:

[*:3fv43iru]Digital Clock
[*:3fv43iru]Turing Machine
[*:3fv43iru]Scrolling Ticker Display
[*:3fv43iru]16 bit Arithmetic and Logic Unit (!)
[*:3fv43iru]Conway's Game of Life(!!!)
[*:3fv43iru]Conway's Game of Life(Another!!)

Environments:

[*:3fv43iru]High-rise Construction
[*:3fv43iru]The Labyrinth
[*:3fv43iru]Skylands
[*:3fv43iru]Flamebourne Arena
[*:3fv43iru]Compilation of awesome stuff!

If there's something you want to see featured here, let me know about it!

WOW! Thats terrific!

I have been waiting for this, a 3D editor. Thank you.

Looks pretty sharp. Copy and past is very nice. With the optimization this could turn into a great piece of software.

Please try the new version!

I would love to try the editor, but after selecting any level.dat, the program closes. No error messages either, if that matters. Just letting you know.

hey5000 said:

I'm working on Infinite map support right now! In the meantime, you should be able to open .mclevel files, so feel free to try that out.

codewarrior said:

Ah, okay.

Performance is alot better now. I still find it tricky to navigate though.

I've posted a new version. You're welcome to try it!

If you can make this for smaller maps (smaller than infinite size), I will love you forever.

Animator said:

Which smaller maps? It can open the old indev .mclevel files, did you mean those?

Quote

Those, and server maps that use .mine (creative map files) for the sake of being able to make levels for maps. If it can do that, I'll be surely amazed.

Nice job! I managed to get it to work. I used Omen to convert my *.dat to a *.mclevel
I just viewed my map, I didn't attempt to edit. The map I used was 256 x 256 x 256.
It was on the slow side, about 10-12 fps. I'm running Vista Home Premium with 4 gigs on a Core 2 duo 2.2ghz and a Nvidia 9800GT (512meg texture mem).

I did notice that it was displaying the 1/2 height step blocks as a full block.

One suggestion, the ability to configure the keys would be nice, maybe a text config file of some kind for that.
I find "w,a,s,d" to be awkward, I prefer the arrow keys.

pete1061 said:

Thanks for the feedback! I'll have a config file in the next release or so. After that, I'm going to work on improving performance from now on.


In the meantime, I've posted a new version with a couple of new features. Check it out, and don't forget to report bugs!

Crashes on load, mang.

And I was just trying to load a flatrock level.

You should keep an archive of previous versions, please.