“Since I’ve discovered Panicle I was not able to sleep due to sheer excitement.” – Satisfied Customer
Panicle is THE program designed and written just for you if any of the following points applies to you:
- You are too cheap to pay $11 for Qubicle but already own Minecraft
- You simply can’t get anything done in Qubicle
- You just like having a 3D voxel editor where you can really dive into your creation
- You’re not an artist and just want a quick and dirty placeholder model
- You want to kind-of import Minecraft stuff into Stonehearth without too much effort
(In my case, it’s all of these points. I’m also a very satisfied customer.)
Got your interest? Very well. Let me introduce to you PANICLE 2015 Professional Team Edition Enterprise Solution.
Now that we had a little fun, let’s be serious. While Qubicle allows exporting to Minecraft schematics in the more expensive versions, importing isn’t possible. Because I don’t plan on buying Qubicle (I’m sorry, I just can’t get around its interface) and because I was challenged by @SteveAdamo I’ve decided to write a little conversion tool.
I would like to OpenSource this as well, but I’m not exactly sure if I can do that. The file format isn’t mine (although the spec was released under CC0) and the classes I have written could very easily be used to write a qb-to-obj converter, which is something that, I believe, isn’t too well received. Nevertheless, it’s my usual C#, not obfuscated, not packed or anything so it should be fairly decompilable if you really want to.
Features
- Able to “slice” qb matrices up to show each layer of voxels. Currently, this only works on the very first matrix defined - which is fine for about 90% of the SH models, the only real exception would be humans and outfits I guess.
- Can convert Minecraft .schematics (exported from, for example, MCEdit - but as long as the tool keeps the file format convention, it should work) into working .qb files, where each MC block represents one voxel in the model.
- Which color is chosen for each block can be customized by simply adding the block (and its data value) in the “blocks.json” with a color value. This also allows overriding the default values (which just contain wool and gold if I remember correctly).
- It’s possible to define blocks as “void”, these blocks will not appear in the qb. Use them as scaffolding/helpers in MC. The default blocks.json contains such an entry for glass.
- Simple drag-and-drop and console support; .qb files will be dumped whereas .schematic will be converted (and dumped).
Pictures
Enough talk, let’s see something. First of all, let’s have one of those sliced pictures. In this case, I’ve taken the oak_log from Stonehearth and sliced it. To have it better visible, I’ve scaled it by factor eight - normally, one pixel represents one voxel.
Now let’s move on to some quick creations of mine. They’re all made of wool because it’s the only real block that is shipped with Panicle. It’s doing an excellent job for what it is intended though, which is some sort of placeholder creator.
The image on the left/top is the result in SH, the right/bottom one is the original in MC, default texture pack.
Of course, all these models can be scaled just like any other model. In the pictures above, they’re twice their normal size I believe.
To have an example of that, here’s a train track. The carts themselves are slightly smaller than settlers, each track fits exactly on one “tile”.
Usage
In order to have your own blocks/other blocks render, you will need to modify the “blocks.json”. I’ve shipped an example in which I set lapis and diamond blocks. The syntax is fairly simple, it’s "blockId" or "blockId:data" for the key and either [ r, g, b] or "#rrggbb" for the value. If you want a block to be ignored (because you don’t want it dumped in the game, because it was a scaffold, some kind of helper/ruler, or just a placeholder), you can set its entry to false. Panicle will then treat these blocks as if they were air.
If you have set all blocks (if you don’t, the program will - right now - crash and tell you which block it was looking for), simply drag-and-drop the requested .schematic file onto Panicle.exe and see the magic go. The created .qb file will be in the same folder as the original .schematic.
In order to “slice” a qb file, simply drag and drop it onto Panicle.exe. The sliced png will be placed in the same folder as the original qb, named after the original file, the matrix name (if multiple are available) and finally some plane.
To create a new cube from a texture, simply drag&drop a square .png file on Panicle.exe. The created .qb will be in the same folder, same name.
To create a multi-block object (a Minecraft schematic where a Minecraft-block is mapped to another qubicle file), make sure that you have defined all blocks in your blocks.json or that they exist as qubicle file (“block_ID.qb” or “block_ID_DATA.qb” - for example, “block_4.qb” and “block_17_8.qb”) in the same directory as the original schematic. The schematic’s file extension needs to be changed to “pansmatic”. Then just drag & drop it.
Minecraft itself cannot create schematic files. You need to use a third party tool - personally, I’m using MCEdit. Simply load your world with MCEdit, select the region you want to qubise and hit “Export” in the bottom-left.
Requirements
Panicle requires the .NET Framework 4.5. I think I could easily break that down to 4.0 or even 3.5, but 4.5 should be really widespread enough. If you wish to create large structures (we’re speaking about more than the average statue/house here), you will likely need a 64bit operation system (and .NET framework).
Current limitations and possible features
- Panicle is not a replacement for Qubicle. It’s quite a tiresome process to always do something in MC, then export it, then convert it. If you’re doing a lot of modelling, then just using Qubicle is probably the better way.
- Future feature: It was already in but then got removed, but I was thinking about adding support for “special” blocks such as the canvas and painted blocks (from OpenBlocks) or perhaps the glowstone illuminator. It’s unlikely that this feature will return but if enough people want it I’ll see what I can do.
- Future feature: Perhaps something to rotate or flip objects.
Download
Panicle.7z for .NET Framework 4.5. It’s still a kind of WIP, but it’s usable. I believe. I hope.
If you want to give it a try, I have Apple.schematic and Track.schematic that you can try immediately.
This time, the third party libraries used are fNbt and JSON.NET.
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