🗺️ Frames Map 3D
Maps in item frames render the surrounding terrain in three dimensions, right in front of you.
✨ Overview
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Frames Map 3D turns a plain framed map into a miniature diorama of the land it was drawn on. Instead of a flat, painted square, the map's surroundings rise and fall in real 3D — hills bulge out of the frame, water sits at its own depth, and the level of detail scales smoothly with how far away you're standing. Rotate a framed map or hang several side by side and the terrain lines up seamlessly across frames, just like the vanilla map itself already does. An authorized NeoForge port of 3D Maps by rainbowtwister7777 (originally a Fabric mod), ported to NeoForge 1.21.1 by Stalking Dragons with the original author's explicit permission. The rendering pipeline was rebuilt from scratch against 1.21.1's actual APIs (this Minecraft version doesn't have the newer render-state architecture the original mod relies on), while keeping the same look and behavior. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the original author beyond that permission. |
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🎯 Features
🏔 3D terrain in every framed map
Once a map has been walked (or captured server-side) and placed in an item frame, its surroundings are rendered as real 3D geometry — not a flat texture — using the map's own color data, so it always matches what the map shows.
🌊 Distance-based level of detail
Mesh detail scales down automatically the further away the camera is, keeping framed maps cheap to render even when several are visible at once. The aggressiveness of this scaling is configurable from the in-game settings screen.
🏖️ Seamless multi-frame terrain
Adjacent framed maps that belong to the same terrain line up their edges, including water edges, so a wall of framed maps reads as one continuous landscape instead of separate tiles.
⚙️ In-game settings
A settings button next to Video Settings opens a dedicated screen for the mod's client-side options (level-of-detail aggressiveness, enable/disable 3D rendering). Each framed map also has its own per-frame settings (3D on/off, base height) reachable from the map itself.
🏠 Shader-pack aware
Detects when Iris is rendering a shadow pass and skips the 3D mesh for that pass, avoiding double-darkened or duplicated geometry under shader packs.
🧱 Mod Structure
| Area | What it provides |
|---|---|
Map3DVolume / Map3DSavedData | Server-side capture and persistent storage of the 3D terrain data around a map. |
Map3DServer / FramedMapServer | Capture scheduling and item-frame interaction handling (rotate, open settings). |
Map3DMesh / Map3DRenderTypes | Client-side mesh building and the custom render pipeline used to draw it. |
ItemFrameMixin / ItemFrameRendererMixin / MapRendererMixin | Hook the vanilla item frame and map renderer to swap in the 3D mesh when available. |
FramedMapSettingsScreen / Map3DSettingsScreen | Per-frame and global settings UI. |
📋 Requirements
| Minecraft | 1.21.1 |
| NeoForge | 21.1.249+ |
| Dependencies | None |
| Side | Client and Server (required on both for 3D rendering to work; safe to run server-only, clients without it just see the flat vanilla map) |
🎮 How to Use
- Install NeoForge 21.1.249 or later for Minecraft 1.21.1.
- Place Frames Map 3D in the
modsfolder — on the server and on every client in multiplayer. - Fill in a map and place it in an item frame. Give the terrain a moment to be captured, and it will render in 3D automatically.
- Open the map's per-frame settings from the map itself, or the global settings from Options → the button next to Video Settings.
🙏 Credits & License
Frames Map 3D is an authorized NeoForge port of 3D Maps by rainbowtwister7777 (Fabric), ported to NeoForge 1.21.1 by Stalking Dragons with the original author's explicit permission to fork and port the mod. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the original author beyond that permission.
License: MIT (this port); 3D Maps itself is All Rights Reserved by its author, and this port is published with the original author's explicit permission to fork and port it. The complete corresponding source is published at gitlab.com/stalking-dragons/minecraft/frames-map-3d. The full licence text ships in the jar (META-INF/LICENSE) and in the repository LICENSE/NOTICE files.
https://codex.skdragons.com/
Codex Stalking Dragons — Minecraft Modding

