minecraft-visual-renderer

Render Minecraft item tooltips and the player list (tab list) to images, matching what the 26.3 client draws.

Tooltip	Tab list

How close to vanilla is it?

The layout, colours, shadows, bold/italic/underline/strikethrough, obfuscation, legacy § codes, translations, sorting, column logic and signal bars follow the client's own rendering code.

How the text looks depends on the RenderEnvironment:

• With vanilla assets (RenderEnvironment.fromAssets): pixel-identical to the game. This includes Unifont for non-Latin scripts, custom fonts and tooltip styles from resource packs, the default skins, and translations from the language file.
• Without assets (the default): uses the bundled Minecraftia font and sprites generated in code. Most Latin text is identical. A few glyphs (( ) * + , - . 2 : ; @ G t { | } and the backtick) are drawn slightly differently, the tooltip border gradient is off by a few colour units, and characters Minecraftia lacks show as boxes.

Install

repositories {
    maven("https://jitpack.io")
}

dependencies {
    implementation("com.github.ultranetworkmc:minecraft-visual-renderer:main-SNAPSHOT")
}

Requires Java 25. Adventure and Gson must be on the classpath. Paper and Velocity already provide them, so on those you don't need to add anything else.

On servers without a display, start the JVM with -Djava.awt.headless=true.

Usage

Use vanilla assets (recommended)

Do this once at startup, off the main thread. It downloads the client jar and fonts from Mojang into the cache folder and checks their SHA-1. Later startups reuse the cache.

MinecraftAssets assets = MinecraftAssets.download("26.3", dataFolder.toPath().resolve("minecraft-assets"));
RenderEnvironment.setDefault(RenderEnvironment.fromAssets(assets));

You can also use a jar or resource pack you already have, layered like the in-game pack list (first one wins):

MinecraftAssets assets = MinecraftAssets.layered(
    MinecraftAssets.zip(Path.of("my-pack.zip")),
    MinecraftAssets.zip(Path.of("client.jar")));

Item tooltip (Paper)

Tooltip lines come from the server's own tooltip code, so rarity colours, enchantments, attributes, lore and hidden components all match. build() reads the item on the calling thread and renders asynchronously.

ItemImageRenderer.builder()
    .item(player.getInventory().getItemInMainHand())
    .player(player)
    .build()
    .thenApply(ImageUtil::toPng)
    .thenAccept(png -> /* send or save the PNG bytes */);

Tooltip from components

BufferedImage image = TooltipRenderer.builder()
    .line(Component.text("Excalibur", NamedTextColor.AQUA))
    .line(Component.text("A legendary blade", NamedTextColor.DARK_PURPLE, TextDecoration.ITALIC))
    .render();

Tab list

// Exactly what a player sees (Paper)
PaperAdapters.tabList(viewer).build().thenAccept(image -> ...);

// Or build it yourself
PlayerListRenderer.builder()
    .header(Component.text("My Server", NamedTextColor.GOLD))
    .entry(PlayerListEntry.builder("Notch").uuid(notchUuid).latency(40).score(12).build())
    .showHeads(true)
    .build();

Skins are fetched from Mojang, or from PlayerListEntry#skinUrl if set. Results are cached for 30 minutes. Use skinProvider(...) to plug in your own source, or SkinProvider.none() to always use the default skins.

Options

All builders support:

• scale(int): output pixels per GUI pixel, like the GUI scale setting (default 2).
• backdrop(Color) or backdrop(Backdrop): paints behind the translucent background (default transparent). Backdrop.sky() is vanilla's daytime sky gradient, so the image looks like the overlay in game. Backdrop.gradient(top, bottom) gives a custom gradient.
• environment(RenderEnvironment): overrides the default environment.
• build(Executor): renders on your own executor.

The tab list also has:

• screenWidth(int): the scaled screen width the list is laid out for, which caps column widths and wraps the header and footer (default 480).
• transparentBackground(true): leaves out the translucent black panel and row highlights, so only text, heads, scores and signal bars are drawn. This suits dark backgrounds like Discord.

Development

./gradlew test

./gradlew test -Pmvr.assets.version=26.3

The second command also runs the tests against the real game assets (it downloads them first).

./gradlew test -Pmvr.updateGolden=true

This regenerates the golden images after an intentional rendering change. Review the image diff before committing.

Credits

• Minecraftia by Andrew Tyler, used as the fallback font, licensed CC BY-SA.
• Minecraft assets belong to Mojang. They are not bundled; they are downloaded from Mojang when you ask for them.