Defining custom perspectives

If the standard, predefined perspectives are not suitable for a user's needs, custom perspectives can be defined. With custom perspectives, a user is free to utilize the full flexibility and capabilities of the rendering engine.

Custom perspective definitions can be made by modifying the standard perspective definitions, found in perspectives.txt, or by adding new or updated definitions to the custom-perspectives.txt file (the preferred method).

At present, only one class of perspective is supported: the IsoHDPerspective class. This class defines an isometric viewpoint, with full control of the direction of view, angle of view, and scale of view. The definition of a perspective is structured as follows:

perspectives:
  - class: org.dynmap.hdmap.IsoHDPerspective
    name: my_custom_perspective
    azimuth: 124
    inclination: 55
    scale: 16

The required parameters for the isometric perspectives include the following:

• name : the unique name for the perspective. If a custom perspective has the same name as an existing standard perspective, it will replace it.

• azimuth : the angle, in degrees clockwise from north, of the viewpoint for the map : 0 = north, 90 = east, 180 = south, 270 = west. Any angle value is allowed.

• inclination : the angle, in degrees below horizontal, of the viewpoint for the map: 90 = top view, 0 = horizontal (not allowed). Permitted values are any value from 20 to 90 degrees.

• scale : the scale or resolution used for rendering the scene, in pixels per block edge. Values from 1 to 64 are supported, although 64 would correspond to a HUGE map - 16 yields a very high quality map (corresponding to hires in the standard perspectives), 8 yields a good quality map (corresponding to medres), and 4 yields a good quality map (corresponding to lowres) if a shader other than a texture pack shader is used (cave, biome, colorschemes).

In addition to these core required parameters, additional optional parameters are supported to modify the processing of the perspective:

• maximumheight : if set, this sets a maximum height value (Y coordinate, in the Minecraft map) of blocks to be rendered. If it is set below 127, all blocks above this height will be invisible - logically slicing the top off of the world as a selected height. This can be used to show underground views.

• minimumheight : if set, this set a minimum height value (Y coordinate, in the Minecraft map) of the blocks to be rendered. If it is set above 0, all blocks below this height will be invisible - logically slicing the bottom off of the world at a selected height. This can be used to show underground views.

• fence-to-block-join : if set, this overrides the fence-to-block-join setting in configuration.txt. If true, fences will be rendered to join other blocks (as is the case in 1.9 and later); if false, fences only join with other fences.