Blockbench vs ForgeGradle

Blockbench is a free, open-source editor for making low-poly 3D models. Its tools support cuboid and mesh modeling, and users can create, edit, and paint textures in the program. Blockbench can generate a model's UV map and template, and connect to an external image editor or pixel-art program. For animation, it supports rigging, position, rotation, and scale keyframes, along with a graph editor. The built-in plugin store offers extensions such as tools, export formats, and model generators; users can also create plugins. Blockbench is available as a web app and on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. The project is licensed under the GPL. Its privacy policy says the software does not knowingly collect personally identifiable data, though it may collect anonymized usage information such as installation count. Local storage and cookies can remember preferences on a user's device. When users choose Model Sharing, model data is stored for the duration they select, and they can request earlier removal.

ForgeGradle is a free Gradle plugin and Minecraft mod development framework used with Forge and FML. Its documentation focuses on setting up a mod development environment, not teaching Java, Groovy or Gradle. Setup requires a Java Development Kit and familiarity with an integrated development environment. The guide provides commands to generate run configurations for Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA and Visual Studio Code. Configurations can specify arguments, working directories, task names, environment properties and system properties; Forge supplies client, server, data and gameTestServer run types. Developers can select human-readable mappings and use a reobf task to convert a mod JAR to SRG mappings for production. Dependencies can be sourced from repositories or a local flat directory and wrapped with fg.deobf. An optional Jar-in-Jar system bundles selected dependencies and records metadata during the build. The documentation covers Minecraft versions 1.12 through 1.19, plus 1.19.4. Its default stable and snapshot mappings are typically incomplete and are no longer available as of Minecraft 1.17. The repository identifies the license as LGPL-2.1.