Camera Obscura

Capture the most memorable moments of your world or server as photographs! This unique mod allows you to take pictures of your surroundings and save them as in-game maps.

Main advantage: no client-side mods required for server use! All image processing is performed directly on the server using ray tracing technology.

Main Item

The mod adds a special Camera to the game. Externally it resembles a regular spyglass but has unique functions. Taking photos requires consumable materials - a map or other item that can be configured in the settings.

Currently, there is no crafting recipe for the camera. You can obtain it using the command:

/give @s camera-obscura:camera

Configuration Settings

The configuration file is created on first launch and located at:

configs/camera-obscura.json

Example configuration with default values:

{
  "renderDistance": 128,
  "showSystemMessages": false,
  "renderEntities": false,
  "renderEntitiesAmount": 20,
  "fullbright": false,
  "fov": 70,
  "biomeBlend": 1,
  "cameraItem": "minecraft:spyglass",
  "cameraConsumesItem": true,
  "cameraConsumeItem": "minecraft:map",
  "commandPermissionLevel": 2
}

Parameter descriptions:

• renderDistance: Render distance in blocks
• showSystemMessages: Show system messages when taking photos via commands (default false)
• renderEntities: Experimental entity rendering function (default false)
• renderEntitiesAmount: Number of entities to render when the function is enabled (default 20)
• fullbright: Ignore light levels, rendering everything at maximum brightness (default false)
• fov: Field of view, works similarly to vanilla client settings (minimum 30, maximum 110). Default 70
• biomeBlend: Biome blending value
• cameraItem: Vanilla item to display as camera (default minecraft:spyglass)
• cameraConsumesItem: Require consumable materials for taking photos (default true)
• cameraConsumeItem: Consumable item for taking photos (default minecraft:map)
• commandPermissionLevel: Permission level for commands (default 2)

Available Commands

/camera-obscura

Takes a photo from the perspective of the player executing the command and gives the resulting map

/camera-obscura <[Entity|Player]> <scale>

Takes a photo from the perspective of the specified entity or player. Can specify scale up to 3 (3x3 map)

/camera-obscura save

Takes a photo from the player's perspective and saves it as PNG in the folder: renders/<image_name>.png, where the name is generated from the current date in the format: yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS

/camera-obscura save <Entity> <scale>

Takes a photo from the perspective of the specified entity and saves as PNG. Can specify scale up to 10 (1280px 1280px)

Default image size: 128px 128px

/camera-obscura clear-cache

Clears the cache (textures, resource pack models, block definitions, cached render models)

Permission System

Default permission level is 4, but it can be changed via the commandPermissionLevel parameter. For systems like LuckPerms, the following permissions are available:

camera-obscura.command camera-obscura.command.scale

camera-obscura.command.entity camera-obscura.command.entity.scale

camera-obscura.command.save camera-obscura.command.save.scale

camera-obscura.command.save.entity camera-obscura.command.save.entity.scale

camera-obscura.clear-cache

Known Issues

All listed shortcomings will be fixed in future updates

• Entity rendering is slow and doesn't support all entities
• Liquids appear "blocky"
• Hard lighting
• End portal and gateway blocks appear pure black (temporarily using black concrete texture)
• Models larger than one block may be cut off during rendering
• Rendering breaks with coordinates in the millions

How It Works

Game resources are downloaded from Mojang's servers and used to render the world through ray tracing. After rendering is complete, a map with the image is created or a PNG file is saved to the renders folder.