# Mineways : 3D Print Your Minecraft Model

January 3, 2012

[Mineways](http://realtimerendering.com/erich/minecraft/public/mineways/) is a free program that makes it easy to select a model from a [Minecraft](http://www.minecraft.net/) world map and render it and 3D print via [Shapeways](/content/site-root.html).

Developed by [Eric Haines](http://erich.realtimerendering.com/), the [latest version](http://realtimerendering.com/erich/minecraft/public/mineways/mineways.zip) of Mineways runs on Windows (or Linux under Wine) and allows you to output Minecraft models in full color, or to fabricate in plastic.  Check out [Eric’s Mineways Shapeways Shop](/content/shops/mineways/index.html) for examples or the [Mineways Flickr group](http://www.flickr.com/groups/mineways/pool/with/6626972287/) he has set up.

There are already [over 1900 Minecraft tagged items](/content/gallery?mg%5Bsearch%5D%5Bcategories%5D=&mg%5Bsearch%5D%5Btext%5D=minecraft/index.html) on show, for sale or download in the [Shapeways gallery](/content/gallery/index.html) and we are expecting to see many, many more as the game engine makes 3D modelling fun and accessible to thousands of people.  Minecraft and Mineways may end up being a great stepping stone to [3DTin](http://www.3dtin.com/) which has a comparable base architecture or [Tinkercad](http://tinkercad.com/) which may also be intuitive to those who enter 3D modelling via [Minecraft](http://www.minecraft.net/).

Take a look at the [video](http://youtu.be/MTAztZjP3ak) which shows how easy it is to export a part of the Minecraft world to Shapeways via Mineways.

The (C/C++) [code is available open source](http://realtimerendering.com/erich/minecraft/public/mineways/MinewaysSource.rar) and based on [minutor](http://seancode.com/minutor/) written by Sean Kasun, Mineways is a superset of his mapper, with a model exporter and other additional features.  Take a look at the Mineways page for all of the documentation.. A big thanks to Eric for all his work in making this happen, we are super excited to see so much Minecraft coolness in the Shapeways galleries.

[Designing Christmas Decoration in Minecraft](http://www.flickr.com/photos/postapocalyptic/6626972287/in/pool-1862849@N21/) / [post-apocalyptic research institute](http://www.flickr.com/photos/postapocalyptic/) / [CC BY-SA 2.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)