UNIQUE SERVER-SIDE CAMERA DEVELOPMENT

Want to stream what is happening on your Minecraft server without running a second Minecraft client?

SpectatorCamera is an experimental Paper plugin that creates a virtual spectator camera directly on the server. It can automatically follow players, switch cinematic angles, patrol active locations when the server is empty, and publish a browser-based live preview.

The project started as a simple spectator-camera plugin for Paper 1.21.1. It is now being developed into a server-side Minecraft renderer and streaming camera system.

Inspired by the Makoto server.

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT

• No second Minecraft account is required in bot mode.
• No normal Minecraft client is required for the built-in browser preview.
• The plugin creates a virtual camera bot with a configurable nickname.
• The camera can appear in the tab list and server player count.
• A built-in MJPEG stream can be opened in a browser.
• The renderer uses assets from the official matching client.jar.
• The camera can follow players automatically or be positioned manually.
• When the server is empty, it can patrol saved “interesting places” where players spent the most time.
• Chunks around the camera can remain loaded even without real players online.

RENDERER FEATURES

The experimental server-side renderer includes:

• Vanilla texture and model loading from client.jar
• Blockstate and model JSON support
• UV mapping and alpha/cutout textures
• Water, fire, foliage transparency and biome tinting
• Day/night sky, clouds, sun and moon
• Sky light, block light and emissive light
• 3D players with real skins, nametags, head rotation, sneaking, running, held items and damage feedback
• Initial support for mobs, paintings, item frames and selected block entities

CONFIGURATION

The configuration allows you to:

• Choose between a virtual bot camera and a real camera account.
• Set the camera nickname.
• Enable or disable tab-list visibility.
• Configure automatic player switching and cinematic angle intervals.
• Configure a hub location for an empty server.
• Configure chunk loading around the camera.
• Configure local browser preview resolution, FPS and port.
• Enable automatic client.jar download.
• Configure interesting-place tracking and patrol behaviour.

COMMANDS

• /camera start — start automatic camera mode
• /camera stop — stop the camera
• /camera auto on|off — enable or disable automatic tracking
• /camera view — move the camera to your current point of view in manual mode
• /camera sethub — set the empty-server camera location
• /camera status — show current camera status
• /camera render — create a renderer image
• /camera disable [player] — exclude a player from camera tracking
• /camera enable [player] — enable tracking for a player again

BETA NOTICE

This plugin is currently a beta / experimental development build.

The server-side renderer is still under active development. Many blocks, complex block entities, model variants, mobs, particles and animations may be missing or render incorrectly. It is not yet a full replacement for the official Minecraft client renderer.

Use it for testing, development and streaming experiments.

If you find a bug or want to share feedback, contact me on Telegram: @AlexsandrDeveloper