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Basic Guide

The app main interface consists of two panels:

  • At the LEFT, the original image is displayed.
  • At the RIGHT, a preview of the map (how it will look in game) is displayed.

All of the options are available in the application top menu.

Main view

Load an image

The first step is loading an image, to do that:

  • Go to the menu: Image > Load Image and select an image file from your computer.
  • You can also drag and drop an image file and it will be loaded.

Resize the image

Minecraft maps have a fixed resolution of 128x128 pixels. There is no way to change it in the vanilla game, so the image has to fit inside a whole number of maps.

To achieve this, the application adds a padding to the image, with white as the default color.

You can resize the image directly using the app, to do that go to the menu: Image > Resize Image

Modify original image

Maybe you want to modify the original image before converting into a map, like changing the background color, the saturation, brightness or contrast.

This is a common practice to make the map look better, to do that, go to the menu: Image > Image Settings

You can also adjust the transparency tolerance if you are using images with transparency. The higher the tolerance, more translucid pixels will be considered as transparent instead of solid.

Choose a build method

Once you selected the image you want, you have to decide how do you want to build your map. Depending on your permissions in the world or server your are playing, you may choose:

  • None - Choose this if you have full access and you do not want to build it, you just want to create the .dat map files so you can directly import them in your world or server. This gives access to all the available colors
  • Staircased - Choose this method if you want to build the map in survival, and you want a difficulty balance. This method creates the map with staircases of blocks, with only single block jumps in height. This gives access to 75% of the available colors
  • 3D (Complex) - Choose this one if you don't care about difficulty. This is the same as staircased, but with arbitrary jumps in height, making it more compact but really hard to build. This gives access to 75% of the available colors
  • Flat - Choose this one if you want a simple build. This is ideal if you want to manually modify it in creative, however it drastically reduces the amount of colors. This gives access to 25% of the available colors

To change this option, use the menu: Build Method

Transparency

In the Transparency menu, you can choose to use transparency, in order to preserve the transparency of images.

Partially transparent maps cannot be built. So, if you plan on building the map as an structure or schematic, always select 'Use background color'.

The 'Use transparency' option is only for creative players or server operators who wish to export the map files (.dat). Partially transparent maps can be placed using invisible item frames, preserving their transparency in game. You can get an invisible item frame with the following command:

/give @p minecraft:item_frame[minecraft:entity_data={id:"minecraft:item_frame",Invisible:1b},minecraft:custom_name='[{"text":"Invisible Item Frame"}]',minecraft:enchantments={protection:1}] 64

Choose the version

In the Version menu, choose the version you are building the map in.

This is important to change the available blocks. This also changes the format of the files you export, so it's really important you choose the right version.

Customize the materials

In the menu Materials > Customize Materials you have a list of materials.

You can customize it by enabling and disabling materials (this also disables or enables colors) and also you can change the materials you want to use for each color.

The preview will change in real time, so you can play with it if you don't have many materials in game.

If you want a list of materials in a text file, go to the menu: Materials > Export Materials List

Apply dithering

Sometimes, due to the low amount of colors available in minecraft maps, there will be a very noticeable difference between the original and the map.

However, you can use a technique called Dither to introduce random noise in the image and simulate more colors to the human brain.

To do that, use the menu: Dithering

Check the preview to see if it improves. Usually dithering helps more the bigger the image is.

Save the project

After you made your map look as you want, you may want to save that configuration in case you want to change it later. to do that go to File > Save Project and save your project to a file.

You can open it later with File > Open Project or dragging the project file to the application main window.

Manually modifying the image

If you are not satisfied with the result the tool gives, you can do the following:

  • Click the option Image > Save Preview as. This will allow you to save the preview image of the result map.
  • Edit the preview image with some image editor. Gimp is a really good one. If you are on Windows, Visual Studio also has a really good editor for pixel art images.
  • After making changes to the image and saving it, use Image > Load to load the modified image and create the map from it instead of the original one.

Export the result

You can export the result using the menu: File > Export

There are two main options:

There is also an extra option to export to minecraft functions. This is only for flat maps in order to place them next to each other. For 3D and staircased maps this won't work due to the height limit.