Urban layers

What do you think you could do with one thousand hours in Minecraft? I feel like I've already spent that many hours in the game, and most of it has just been a loop of dying, running to collect my loot, and dying again (darn those creepers!), but maybe you're more dedicated than me? Maybe you've built one of those intricate little villages, or a castle, or a gigantic statue of yourself out of gold blocks. I won't judge! 

French builder mine67 has different priorities. He spent a thousand hours building a map he simply calls "Urban Buildings". But, as you'll soon see, there’s more to this title, because Urban Buildings isn't anything like what we’ve featured here on Minecraft.net in the past. In reality, it's a neat perspective trick – an illusion created out of thousands of layers, each one adding up to make something that's far more detailed than the plain dirt house builds I make in my spare time. But why have me explain it when the pictures below will do a far better job? Just look at them with your eyes!

mine67 says that he first began "building seriously" at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but the Urban Buildings build didn't begin until May 2022. Inspired by concept art by Edward Delandre and Alariko, which depicts grungy characters and busy urban cities with apartments piled on top of shops on top of markets, mine67 began to sketch out buildings in Minecraft. He quickly realized that traditional Minecraft building just wasn't going to cut it with the level of detail he required.

"When I started the construction, I was forced to detach myself from my usual conception of the build," he says. The final build, he decided, would be viewed at an angle, which meant that he could paint the details in layers – some chains and stone here, flowerpots and layers of glass there, all adding up to make one solid building. 

Speaking of techniques, I usually like to point out a few neat details about the builds that we show off on the site, but this build is entirely details. Still, let's take a look at some extremely neat techniques that mine67 figured out while building – like the dragon motif made of dead coral on the door of the central building, or the fact that all the windows have accurate reflections, or mine67's clever use of shulker boxes that deserves its own paragraph. 

You see, shulker boxes cast shadows, like most blocks placed on a surface do. But shulker boxes disappear when you move away, and other blocks don't. This allowed mine67 to create custom shadows without adding extra bulk to the design, by placing shulker boxes in all the places that needed shadow. He ended up with 11,876 shulker boxes across the entire build, and you can't see any of them. How cool is that?