Cinemalya

🎬 Cinemalya

🎥 A Minecraft datapack library for flying players through cinematic camera moves.

• ✨ Sweep a player anywhere along a spline, with easing, arcs and particle trails.
• 🎞️ A ready-made title card intro, and signals to hook your own logic in.
• 🧭 Works from a command block: ~ and ^ coordinates throughout.
• 🎯 Rotations sent at full precision, so the camera sweeps instead of notching.
• ⚡ The path is computed once at launch; playback just pops a frame per step.

📦 Embedded library: package it inside your datapack rather than shipping it separately. Requires LanternLoad and Bookshelf Spline.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/41fed243-05f5-457f-afa7-ba6c6ea59dee

⚡ Quick start

execute as @p run function #cinemalya:v1/launch {with:{x:19.5,y:82.5,z:23.5,duration:60,arc_side:1,particle:"minecraft:glow"}}

Every entry point takes one with compound, so each field inside stays optional.

🔧 Entry points

#cinemalya:v1/launch

execute as <player> run function #cinemalya:v1/launch {with:{x:19.5,y:82.5,z:23.5,duration:60,arc_side:1}}

x / y / z are where the player ends up standing, not where the camera stops.

#cinemalya:v1/launch_here

Destination comes from the execution position and rotation, so relative coordinates work. NBT cannot hold a ~, which is why launch needs absolute numbers and this one exists.

execute positioned ~12 ~8 ~-4 rotated 90 20 as @a[distance=..30] run function #cinemalya:v1/launch_here {with:{duration:60,arc_side:1}}

Mind the order: positioned resolves against the command block before as swaps the executor, so the destination is fixed while each player still starts from their own feet. facing and ^ work too.

#cinemalya:v1/launch_at_entity

execute as <player> run function #cinemalya:v1/launch_at_entity {with:{target:"@e[tag=camera_anchor,limit=1]",duration:60,ease:"ease_in_out"}}

#cinemalya:v1/launch_path

Fly through explicit waypoints. Here the positions are camera positions, used literally.

execute as <player> run function #cinemalya:v1/launch_path {with:{duration:90,ease:"ease_in_out",waypoints:[{args:[-112,75,-21,-30,4]},{args:[-116,77,28,-121,16]},{args:[-72,68,20,92,-11.7]}]}}

waypoints[0] is the starting point, so three waypoints mean two segments. Give just one and the player's own position starts the path. A waypoint may be written three ways:

Missing rot keeps the previous heading; missing duration takes an equal share of the total. at overrides pos. Local ^ needs an execution rotation, so add rotated when using it from a command block.

Easing. A path-level ease shapes the whole travel: it accelerates off the first waypoint, cruises through the middle ones at a steady pace, and settles onto the last. Put ease on a waypoint instead to shape only the hop arriving there:

execute as <player> run function #cinemalya:v1/launch_path {with:{waypoints:[{args:[-112,75,-21,-30,4]},{args:[-116,77,28,-121,16,55],ease:"ease_out"},{args:[-72,68,20,92,-11.7,25],ease:"ease_in"}]}}

That drifts to a near stop on the middle waypoint, holds the beat, then accelerates away.

#cinemalya:v1/intro

Hold on an establishing shot, name the scene, place every player, fly them all in. Run it positioned and rotated at the shot.

execute positioned 36.29 102.97 81.36 rotated 145.55 21.76 run function #cinemalya:v1/intro {with:{title:"Warden Forest",subtitle:"by Stoupy",display_time:130,duration:50}}

target_function runs as each player and is where you teleport them to their spot; omit it and they stay put. Also takes selector, sound, title_color, subtitle_color, and every launch field.

#cinemalya:v1/stop

execute as <player> run function #cinemalya:v1/stop {with:{}}

The player is left exactly where the camera was, so you decide where they belong. restore:false leaves them in spectator too.

📋 Options

Per entry point: launch takes x/y/z, launch_at_entity takes target, launch_path takes waypoints, launch_here takes neither. yaw/pitch do not apply to launch_path, where each waypoint carries its own rot.

Limits

Every argument that ends up bounding a loop is clamped at launch, so a typo costs you a wrong looking cinematic rather than a frozen server.

A travel asking for more frames than the budget gets a softer smoothing instead of a shortened path, so duration:36000 still lands where you told it to.

📡 Signals

Add your own function to these tags. Both run as and at the player.

🔍 Notes

Reading the state. #entities cinemalya.data counts the cinematics playing right now, so you can gate on it (execute if score #entities cinemalya.data matches 1.. run return 1). Camera entities carry the cinemalya.cinematic tag plus whatever you passed in tags.

Rotation precision. Minecraft quantises rotations to steps of 360/256 = 1.40625°, which makes a /spectate camera turn in visible notches (MC-184359). Flipping the camera's OnGround flag each tick makes the server send full precision instead. On by default, one command per cinematic per tick, no side effect since display entities are not living entities. It relies on MC-278440, a community find, so a future version could close it: pass precise_rotation:false to opt out.

How it works. A cinematic is an invisible item_display the player spectates. Your waypoints become spline control points, Bookshelf samples them into a dense polyline, and each segment picks exactly as many frames as its duration buys. All of that happens once at launch, so playback costs one macro and two NBT reads per step whether the path is 10 frames or 500.