Graphics Project

Vaporwave Mini Minecraft

A stylized OpenGL “mini Minecraft” scene featuring terrain rendering, multi-texture mapping, a skybox, and multi-viewport rendering.

TL;DR

A small “Minecraft-like” renderer with first-person navigation, terrain, multi-texture materials, a skybox, and multiple viewports, wrapped in a vaporwave aesthetic.

Purpose

This project was built to practice a complete real-time rendering pipeline—from asset loading and texture workflows to camera controls and scene presentation—while exploring a cohesive vaporwave visual style.

Methodology

1) Core rendering stack (OpenGL pipeline + utilities)

I implemented the scene using a typical modern OpenGL workflow, supported by:

  • stb_image for texture loading
  • Assimp for asset import
  • GLEW + GLFW for OpenGL extensions + window/input
  • FreeImage for additional image handling needs

2) First-person camera + input handling

A first-person camera is driven by:

  • mouse look (yaw/pitch)
  • keyboard movement controls

This lets the scene read like a small “world” rather than a static render.

3) Terrain rendering (world-building)

The world includes terrain rendering, with an explicit performance tradeoff:

  • large terrain datasets were slow
  • I used a smaller dataset to keep frame time stable

This was a practical decision to stay interactive while still demonstrating the technique.

4) Texture mapping (material variety)

The scene supports 5+ distinct textures to differentiate surfaces/objects and strengthen the “block world” readability (Minecraft-like material language).

5) Skybox (mood + depth)

A skybox provides:

  • environmental context
  • stronger depth cues
  • instant “world mood” (especially important for vaporwave palettes)

6) Multiple viewports / windows (presentation)

I rendered the scene using multiple viewports or windows to explore alternate presentations (e.g., different camera angles or debug-like views).

Results

Implemented features (current):

  • First-person camera (mouse + keyboard)
  • Terrain rendering (with dataset scaled for performance)
  • Multi-texture mapping (5+ textures)
  • Skybox
  • Multiple viewports/windows
  • Vaporwave aesthetics (color/style direction)

Notes / Credits

Art support: Ilya Wang, Glen Xu.

Future work

Next features I scoped (but didn’t finalize yet):

  • collision detection with treasure boxes for scoring
  • cubemap reflections using the skybox (environment reflections)