
Jannek Löffler
Minecraft Terrain Creation
How To Make Awsome Renders ( free programs only )
Hey! today i will show you how to make an awesome render of your minecraft world.
In this tutorial I will concentrate on maps of islands, but this will also work for buildings and other maps.
Step 1: get the right programs. ( I will only use free programs. )
1. Chunky: this is the program where we will make the render. You
can download it here:
2. Gimp: this is an image manipulation program. We will use it to make the fine tuning of our picture. You
can download it here: ( as an alternative you can use photoshop for this, but I
will only show with gimp )
Step 2: information you require to start:
1. How much RAM (internal memory ) do you have ? You need to know that because chunky wants to know
how much of it can be used to render the picture. ( if you don’t know how to find out how much ram your
pc has, click this
2. Find out the water level of your minecraft world.
Step 3: open chunky
1. you should now see this.
2. Make sure the minecraft directory is correct,
3. choose your memory limit. Important: use only a maximum of 75 % of your computer’s ram. If you ignore
this, chunky or your pc may crash. [ if you have 4gb ram use a memory-limit of 3000, if you have 16gb
use 12000. my computer has 32 gb ram. So I can use the maximum of the programe. ( the more ram
you have the faster the render works ) ]
Step 4: load any resource pack
1. to load a resourcepack go to options and click on load resourcepack. Now you can choose
the resourcepack you want to have from your resourcepack folder.
Step 5: select world
1. just click on the ‘select world’ button and choose the world you want.
Step 6: select the region
1. zoom out so that you can see the whole world [mouse scroll button]
2. now you can make a red box by pressing L-shift and dragging
while pressing left click. Every red marked chunk is a region you will later see on the render.
Every de-selected chunk will be air in your render. Because of this I would recommend to
select the whole world.
3. Important if you have a computer with only 4 GB RAM- you will have problems if you select a
bigger region then 1500 x 1500 blocks. With more then 20 gb ram you can render pictures
without problems up to world sizes of 4k to 5k ( maybe even bigger I never tried that )
4. when you have selected all chunks you want, make a right click in the selected area. in the small
window with pop up click on “new 3D scene ...“
5. at the bottom of this window you can see the progress of the chunks loading. Wait until a
new window pops up. ( if the loading freeze for more then 1 min your selected area was to
big for your computer. ( if this happens go back to step 6.2 )
Step 7: find a good camera position for your render
1. go to the > tab general settings and set canvas size to 960x540
2. click in the render preview window and fly out with mouse and WASD, until you found a good
position. Its good if you have some pictures where you can see the whole islands and some
pictures where you can see the details of a island. The first picture is for a overview picture.
In the second picture you see a position for a more detailed view.
3. I will now go on with the second type of perspective.
Step 8: water settings ( if you render a terrain without water or a building skip this step
1. go to the tab “water” and enable the water world setting. Set the water height to the same water
level of your Minecraft world. And press apply after that. ( depending on the size of your world and
the quality of your PC, chunky may freeze for up to 40 min. it is still working in the background, so
just wait and keep calm until its done. )
2. ( optional ) enable “still water” if you want that the water reflect very well. If you don't want this,
disable it
Step 9: edit lighting
1. open the tab “lighting” and press “start” in the bottom of the window.
Now you can edit the direction where the sun is located with the “sun azimuth” adjuster,
and the height of the sun with the “sun altitude” adjuster
2. I would also recommend to make the intensity a bit higher
( just try around with these settings to find the perfect position and intensity of the sun )
3. press the reset button








