Prismarine Viewer vs Tectonicus

Prismarine Viewer is a free, web-based viewer for Minecraft servers and bots, available through API, self-hosted, and web use. Mineflayer mode serves a page showing a bot’s surroundings in first or third person and provides drawing functions; lines and displayed primitives can be replaced or erased by ID. Standalone mode visualizes a world without a bot, while headless mode renders a bot’s view for streaming to a file or over TCP. The project lists Minecraft support from 1.8.8 through 1.21.4; other versions in the same major use textures and models from the closest supported version. Online-mode servers can show wide or slim skins and capes when skin data is sent. Examples connect Mineflayer with proxies, Electron, Python, and WebSocket proxies, and export world areas as screenshots or 3D models. Server maps, live updates, and a 3D map view are supported. Install with `npm install prismarine-viewer`; the repository uses the MIT license. Mineflayer and standalone default to six chunks and port 3000.

Tectonicus generates a detailed, zoomable map from a Minecraft Java world by building a 3D model and rendering map images. Its stated aim is to make maps resemble what players see in Minecraft. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows; maps can be viewed offline or served from a web server. Setup involves downloading a release, preparing an XML configuration file, and running the program from the command line with Java. Later runs using the same options are quicker after the initial render because only changed tiles are rendered. Players can filter which signs appear, and signs marked with #view can create first-person views with configurable height, angle, field of view, and nighttime rendering. Release 2.31 supports Minecraft 1.21 through 1.21.11, but not Minecraft 26.1. It also adds rectangular world subsets and arm64 LWJGL libraries for M-series Macs and possibly other ARM systems. Generated images can consume gigabytes of disk space depending on world size; WebP or JPG output and closestZoomSize can reduce storage use. Copper golem statues do not work, and shelves render only partially.