Millions of years into the future, the Earth has been claimed by robotkind. Mankind, as we knew it, is extinct and biological life is a distant memory engram. Self learning and self upgrading systems have given rise to sophisticated techno-ecosystems. Come explore a world where currents of coolant flow in crags of perfectly crystalline-shaped mechascapes, where thinking machines grow fields of photosynthetic power cells and where you are optimized for storage and on the spot manufacture.
===
This is a continuation of the Robot Utopia texture pack by EVanimations, last updated for version 1.7.2 of Minecraft. It was discontinued as the author had more pressing real-life concerns, and left open for anyone to continue as they wished. Five years have passed without a decent survival-friendly sci-fi flavored texture pack and now I've chosen to correct that.
This thread will be used to showcase work and solicit feedback. Every batch of work or so, I'll take a screenshot of the updated textures and upload it in a reply. Any noteworthy thoughts or concerns will be added as well. As of this initial post, I'm currently working my way through the block textures with a goal to update to 1.16.5 before continuing to 1.17 and further. No estimate to completion is available at this time.
Because it was on my mind, I decided to continue by going for the pillagers next. I didn't want to rehash the same villager skin, and I liked the idea of giving each class of pillager unique looks for easy identification during gameplay. Each one got specific features and color schemes to help them all stand out from one another.
First was the Ravager. In my head, the idea was they were "descended" from a long line of combat walker mechs. These are basically tanks with legs, using powerful piston driven legs to traverse terrain.
The Pillager, being the basic hostile footsoldier, was a balancing act. They had to be distinct enough while not being too flashy. My biggest regret is that I don't have the means on Java to change the Pillagers banner to something more appropriate to the setting. Maybe I'll end up basing a future pillager boss face after it, so its got some reasoning?
Now the Vindicators was the one I really wanted to do. Relentless close combat units that you'll definitely want to keep an eye on. Its design was inspired a bit by Maximillian, the killer robot from Disney's The Black Hole. Specifically with regards to its mean visor.
Evokers have a hateful cycloptic eye and a much larger cranial shell for that great big processor. The Vex are flavored as deployable hover drones, and the jaws as hard light constructs of some sort. I'm not nearly satisfied with the jaws as they are, but I'm at a loss for a definite idea.
The Crossbow isn't an entity, but I was of a mind to work on it since the pillagers use it so often. It was also my first custom model, so that felt like an accomplishment. In the end, the tricky part was the json bits which governed the behavior of it, allowing for it to use models and textures of later stages.
Idea is its a much more beefy launcher weapon, capable of loading different types of ammunition. Which reminds, I'm likely to change the arrow texture. No disrespect, but it always felt a bit ill suited thematically to have weapons shooting arrows.
I also fleshed out the cats, which was mostly just making edits of the existing cat texture. No big deal.
The Conduit was fun to build up. Not sure how to flavor it, but there we are.
Dolphins mark my first aquatic mob. Probably the most intelligent and aware of the aquatic mechanisms. If only they had hands for tool use. Featuring a front facing grill for intaking material and wide angled side mounted sensor arrays for comprehensive awareness.
Last but not least, the elytra. Obviously, the design was inspired by actual aircraft wings with the tapered shape, running lights and the control surfaces. The hard part was just getting good screenshots of it in flight.
Next up looks like Endermite and... fish? Expect fish.
First batch of entities so far. Blockbench has been a very... interesting program to get used to. Suddenly, the idea of custom models doesn't seem so intimidating. No promises, but there are a few ideas I've got that I'd like to pursue.
First up, Axolotls. They continue a trend with the packs design where the more companionable mobs have a very friendly Aibo-esque design.
Beds I needed help getting off the ground because of the old formatting. Unlike chests, a simple converter didn't exist. The main body is the same, but wool color influences the lights.
Boats I decided to do from scratch, taking inspiration from the original. After the beds, trying to faithfully convert was simply too much of a chore and it wasn't working.
Polar bears take inspiration from the flashlight headed critters of Horizon Zero Dawn. The original pack made creative use of the original geometry, using transparencies and absences to create something novel using the same model. I wanted to continue that trend - Parts being absent, or simply turning a box and drawing partly on it. Chickens are a good example - The head is the main body, with the head section being turned into some kind of attenae apparatus.
Pandas are differentiated by color, largely. Weak ones are rusty.
Villagers were a feature of the original, my work being to bring them to the new standard. In the original pack, the lights of their "robes" telegraphed occupation.
Villager occupations are shown by their lights colors, mounted on the external shell. Levels are shown by a small LED just above the face. Additional gear, mostly around the head, denotes biome type. I'd have made the "robe" chest plate a biome specific color, but then I noticed that the biome specific gear doesn't always show up, so I figured it'd be easier to just make it small flavor.
Much of that work carried over to zombie villagers. They're rusty and dirty, and their native colors are being overridden. But not quite completely yet.
Last but not least, bees! I based this off concept art from EVanimations. The body lights up when pollinated, and turns red when angry.
The 1.17 update blocks didn't take as much time to do as I thought they would. This update is a bit late in posting - I'm already working on entities as we speak. At some point, I forgot to actually make this post and it was just sitting there for a bit.
+Azalea bush and leaves. Flowering just has pink LEDs in it. I've been told of emissive textures, and this is definitely one I'd like to make use of with. The actual leaves are based off the oak leaf pattern.
+Deepslate, for all your dark and moody builds. I've since darkened the textures to contrast with regular stone - I did an actual world eyeball test and the transition wasn't as immediate as I'd have liked.
+Copper blocks. I'd imagine the slabs would make good corridor floors, especially if you really like the metallic sound under your feet.
+Moss block and the platforming leaf pads. First moss block was more green, then I remembered that moss in this pack was thematically replaced with rust.
+Amethyst blocks. This one took the most iterations to get "right", and I attempted many different approaches. I think crystalline structures are a weakness of mine, at least in 16x resolution block format.
+Dripleaf. Now its some kind of shower-head like machine.
+Dripstone. I kept the coloration of the vanilla block, but turned the actual spikes into chromed structures. I'd imagine they'd look very good as a kind of decoration, perhaps antenna of some kind.
+Sculk sensor. Instead of waving tentacles, four small sonar dishes rotate and listen.
+Candles. I tried at first a version without the wick. Didn't work, so I just had it glowing to make it some kind of futuristic light source. Unless I do custom modelling, this is something of an awkward fix.
So, milestone reached. I've now finished all survival relevant blocks up to version 1.16, excepting things like the shulker textures which are only used for breaking. I'll get to those once I've gone and textured the Shulker entities themselves. Next up is working on the block textures for 1.17, and then moving on to entities and items.
Feels good to get this far, though.
I'm going to skip individual links because its just a chore to do, so enjoy the link to the imgur post directly.
Screens include:
Bone blocks, the chromed, piped endoskeleton of colossal machines long past.
The Prismarine series - Perfect for underwater laboratories.
Glazed Terracotta, which was probably the most draining thing to have worked on thus far. There seem to be only so many ways to do quadrant tiled patterns that look good. Some I did X-axis patterns, like the roads for grey terracotta or the danger stripes for yellow.
Concrete went through some versions. Ultimately, the block is designed for large, unbroken spaces of flat color and the best way seemed to be very minor amounts of noise instead of panelling or the like. Faint enough to be unseen at a large scale, but still present enough that its not just a paint bucket fill.
Red Sandstone and stripped logs follow in the footsteps of their predecessors, largely. Not a whole lot to say.
I've gotten to the end of the alphabetical listing... except for the blocks I've saved for the end. Families I want to do all at once - Stripped logs, Prismarine, Blackstone. Stuff I wanted to look very consistent and designed together.
First up, warped blocks.
Crimson vines and nether wart blocks, finishing the warped fungus.
Wither Rose
Door lineup
And, finally, Blackstone.
With 1.17 coming up, I'll be focusing on finishing the current list of blocks. Once thats done, I'll let myself start to think about the 1.17 blocks - Of which there are a great deal, apparently.
Second update. Not everything, just some I'm proud of. Or that I could remember to take screens of instead of just going one to the next. Currently working on the respawn anchor as of this post.
+Kelp are a circuit board looking plant with lights.
+Lecterns could only be the perfect console. I tried messing with the enchantment book to get the pages to be transparent, to look like floating holographic panels. Then Minecraft started acting... oddly, and I decided to leave that experiment be. If memory serves, though, someone did something like that idea, but I can't remember what pack it was.
+Ancient Debris. I thought about making it an ore similar to the gold ore block next to it, but probably purple in color. But then I thought it would get in the way of proper visual identification. So now its just compressed sheets of metal, pressed into a cube by the weight of the rest of the Nether atop it.
+End City bricks. The Purpur flooring was the hardest to get right once I got the aesthetic down for the pillar. Didn't want it to be too eyecatching, or it'd be an eyesore for a repeated pattern. Didn't want it to have too little, though.
First reported update. I've done work before now, but I hadn't made a habit of taking screenshots. Working through it in alphabetical order, though I'm saving some things to do at once - Red sandstone, blackstone blocks, so on. That way its easier to make things consistent, I figure.
+Crimson planks, roots and small mushroom.
+Big crimson mushroom stem. Animation came out better than I thought, so thats nice.
+Crimson doors. The idea will be for processed Nether blocks to look a little more worn and grungy, as compared to the sleek, efficient and optimized Overworld blocks aesthetic.
+Cyan concrete/s and glazed terracotta. This series of blocks gives me the most pause. For concrete - The usage of this block is intended for large, mostly unblemished sections of a specific color.
Which leads to my first round of feedback request: Should I have concrete blocks with a very minimal line quality? Should they just have some unobtrusive noise without explicit seams?
1
The future is mechanical.
Millions of years into the future, the Earth has been claimed by robotkind. Mankind, as we knew it, is extinct and biological life is a distant memory engram. Self learning and self upgrading systems have given rise to sophisticated techno-ecosystems. Come explore a world where currents of coolant flow in crags of perfectly crystalline-shaped mechascapes, where thinking machines grow fields of photosynthetic power cells and where you are optimized for storage and on the spot manufacture.
This is a continuation of the Robot Utopia texture pack by EVanimations, last updated for version 1.7.2 of Minecraft. It was discontinued as the author had more pressing real-life concerns, and left open for anyone to continue as they wished. Five years have passed without a decent survival-friendly sci-fi flavored texture pack and now I've chosen to correct that.
This thread will be used to showcase work and solicit feedback. Every batch of work or so, I'll take a screenshot of the updated textures and upload it in a reply. Any noteworthy thoughts or concerns will be added as well. As of this initial post, I'm currently working my way through the block textures with a goal to update to 1.16.5 before continuing to 1.17 and further. No estimate to completion is available at this time.
Link to the original pack: Here
Beta 1.0 download: Here
Enjoy your stay, and stay mechanical.
1
Seventh update!
Image folder
Because it was on my mind, I decided to continue by going for the pillagers next. I didn't want to rehash the same villager skin, and I liked the idea of giving each class of pillager unique looks for easy identification during gameplay. Each one got specific features and color schemes to help them all stand out from one another.
First was the Ravager. In my head, the idea was they were "descended" from a long line of combat walker mechs. These are basically tanks with legs, using powerful piston driven legs to traverse terrain.
The Pillager, being the basic hostile footsoldier, was a balancing act. They had to be distinct enough while not being too flashy. My biggest regret is that I don't have the means on Java to change the Pillagers banner to something more appropriate to the setting. Maybe I'll end up basing a future pillager boss face after it, so its got some reasoning?
Now the Vindicators was the one I really wanted to do. Relentless close combat units that you'll definitely want to keep an eye on. Its design was inspired a bit by Maximillian, the killer robot from Disney's The Black Hole. Specifically with regards to its mean visor.
Evokers have a hateful cycloptic eye and a much larger cranial shell for that great big processor. The Vex are flavored as deployable hover drones, and the jaws as hard light constructs of some sort. I'm not nearly satisfied with the jaws as they are, but I'm at a loss for a definite idea.
The Crossbow isn't an entity, but I was of a mind to work on it since the pillagers use it so often. It was also my first custom model, so that felt like an accomplishment. In the end, the tricky part was the json bits which governed the behavior of it, allowing for it to use models and textures of later stages.
Idea is its a much more beefy launcher weapon, capable of loading different types of ammunition. Which reminds, I'm likely to change the arrow texture. No disrespect, but it always felt a bit ill suited thematically to have weapons shooting arrows.
I also fleshed out the cats, which was mostly just making edits of the existing cat texture. No big deal.
The Conduit was fun to build up. Not sure how to flavor it, but there we are.
Dolphins mark my first aquatic mob. Probably the most intelligent and aware of the aquatic mechanisms. If only they had hands for tool use. Featuring a front facing grill for intaking material and wide angled side mounted sensor arrays for comprehensive awareness.
Last but not least, the elytra. Obviously, the design was inspired by actual aircraft wings with the tapered shape, running lights and the control surfaces. The hard part was just getting good screenshots of it in flight.
Next up looks like Endermite and... fish? Expect fish.
2
Sixth update.
Image Link
First batch of entities so far. Blockbench has been a very... interesting program to get used to. Suddenly, the idea of custom models doesn't seem so intimidating. No promises, but there are a few ideas I've got that I'd like to pursue.
First up, Axolotls. They continue a trend with the packs design where the more companionable mobs have a very friendly Aibo-esque design.
Beds I needed help getting off the ground because of the old formatting. Unlike chests, a simple converter didn't exist. The main body is the same, but wool color influences the lights.
Boats I decided to do from scratch, taking inspiration from the original. After the beds, trying to faithfully convert was simply too much of a chore and it wasn't working.
Polar bears take inspiration from the flashlight headed critters of Horizon Zero Dawn. The original pack made creative use of the original geometry, using transparencies and absences to create something novel using the same model. I wanted to continue that trend - Parts being absent, or simply turning a box and drawing partly on it. Chickens are a good example - The head is the main body, with the head section being turned into some kind of attenae apparatus.
Pandas are differentiated by color, largely. Weak ones are rusty.
Villagers were a feature of the original, my work being to bring them to the new standard. In the original pack, the lights of their "robes" telegraphed occupation.
Villager occupations are shown by their lights colors, mounted on the external shell. Levels are shown by a small LED just above the face. Additional gear, mostly around the head, denotes biome type. I'd have made the "robe" chest plate a biome specific color, but then I noticed that the biome specific gear doesn't always show up, so I figured it'd be easier to just make it small flavor.
Much of that work carried over to zombie villagers. They're rusty and dirty, and their native colors are being overridden. But not quite completely yet.
Last but not least, bees! I based this off concept art from EVanimations. The body lights up when pollinated, and turns red when angry.
Look forward to more entities the next batch.
2
Fifth update.
The 1.17 update blocks didn't take as much time to do as I thought they would. This update is a bit late in posting - I'm already working on entities as we speak. At some point, I forgot to actually make this post and it was just sitting there for a bit.
Robot Utopia Update 005
+Azalea bush and leaves. Flowering just has pink LEDs in it. I've been told of emissive textures, and this is definitely one I'd like to make use of with. The actual leaves are based off the oak leaf pattern.
+Deepslate, for all your dark and moody builds. I've since darkened the textures to contrast with regular stone - I did an actual world eyeball test and the transition wasn't as immediate as I'd have liked.
+Copper blocks. I'd imagine the slabs would make good corridor floors, especially if you really like the metallic sound under your feet.
+Moss block and the platforming leaf pads. First moss block was more green, then I remembered that moss in this pack was thematically replaced with rust.
+Amethyst blocks. This one took the most iterations to get "right", and I attempted many different approaches. I think crystalline structures are a weakness of mine, at least in 16x resolution block format.
+Dripleaf. Now its some kind of shower-head like machine.
+Dripstone. I kept the coloration of the vanilla block, but turned the actual spikes into chromed structures. I'd imagine they'd look very good as a kind of decoration, perhaps antenna of some kind.
+Sculk sensor. Instead of waving tentacles, four small sonar dishes rotate and listen.
+Candles. I tried at first a version without the wick. Didn't work, so I just had it glowing to make it some kind of futuristic light source. Unless I do custom modelling, this is something of an awkward fix.
Next update will have entities.
2
Fourth update.
So, milestone reached. I've now finished all survival relevant blocks up to version 1.16, excepting things like the shulker textures which are only used for breaking. I'll get to those once I've gone and textured the Shulker entities themselves. Next up is working on the block textures for 1.17, and then moving on to entities and items.
Feels good to get this far, though.
I'm going to skip individual links because its just a chore to do, so enjoy the link to the imgur post directly.
Screens include:
Bone blocks, the chromed, piped endoskeleton of colossal machines long past.
The Prismarine series - Perfect for underwater laboratories.
Glazed Terracotta, which was probably the most draining thing to have worked on thus far. There seem to be only so many ways to do quadrant tiled patterns that look good. Some I did X-axis patterns, like the roads for grey terracotta or the danger stripes for yellow.
Concrete went through some versions. Ultimately, the block is designed for large, unbroken spaces of flat color and the best way seemed to be very minor amounts of noise instead of panelling or the like. Faint enough to be unseen at a large scale, but still present enough that its not just a paint bucket fill.
Red Sandstone and stripped logs follow in the footsteps of their predecessors, largely. Not a whole lot to say.
Robot Utopia Update 004
1
Third update.
I've gotten to the end of the alphabetical listing... except for the blocks I've saved for the end. Families I want to do all at once - Stripped logs, Prismarine, Blackstone. Stuff I wanted to look very consistent and designed together.
First up, warped blocks.
Crimson vines and nether wart blocks, finishing the warped fungus.
Wither Rose
Door lineup
And, finally, Blackstone.
With 1.17 coming up, I'll be focusing on finishing the current list of blocks. Once thats done, I'll let myself start to think about the 1.17 blocks - Of which there are a great deal, apparently.
Feedback is appreciated.
1
Second update. Not everything, just some I'm proud of. Or that I could remember to take screens of instead of just going one to the next. Currently working on the respawn anchor as of this post.
+Kelp are a circuit board looking plant with lights.
+Lecterns could only be the perfect console. I tried messing with the enchantment book to get the pages to be transparent, to look like floating holographic panels. Then Minecraft started acting... oddly, and I decided to leave that experiment be. If memory serves, though, someone did something like that idea, but I can't remember what pack it was.
+Ancient Debris. I thought about making it an ore similar to the gold ore block next to it, but probably purple in color. But then I thought it would get in the way of proper visual identification. So now its just compressed sheets of metal, pressed into a cube by the weight of the rest of the Nether atop it.
+End City bricks. The Purpur flooring was the hardest to get right once I got the aesthetic down for the pillar. Didn't want it to be too eyecatching, or it'd be an eyesore for a repeated pattern. Didn't want it to have too little, though.
1
First reported update. I've done work before now, but I hadn't made a habit of taking screenshots. Working through it in alphabetical order, though I'm saving some things to do at once - Red sandstone, blackstone blocks, so on. That way its easier to make things consistent, I figure.
+Crimson planks, roots and small mushroom.
+Big crimson mushroom stem. Animation came out better than I thought, so thats nice.
+Crimson doors. The idea will be for processed Nether blocks to look a little more worn and grungy, as compared to the sleek, efficient and optimized Overworld blocks aesthetic.
+Cyan concrete/s and glazed terracotta. This series of blocks gives me the most pause. For concrete - The usage of this block is intended for large, mostly unblemished sections of a specific color.
Which leads to my first round of feedback request: Should I have concrete blocks with a very minimal line quality? Should they just have some unobtrusive noise without explicit seams?