Buildprint
See your build before you place a single block. Buildprint projects any schematic into your world as a translucent ghost, tells you exactly what's missing, and helps you place it block by block.
A modern take on Schematica / Litematica, inspired by Axiom.
What it does
Projects your schematic into the world
Buildprint draws your loaded schematics as a translucent ghost, right where you'll build them — using real block models, not coloured boxes.
- Real blocks & states — including modded blocks, with crisp leaves, see-through glass, and animated water/lava.
- Block entities & entities — chests, signs (with their text), shulkers, item frames, banners, copper golems, mobs and more, ghosted in place.
- Built for big builds — GPU-cached meshes draw huge schematics, several at once, at full render distance without wrecking your frame rate. If things do get heavy, it quietly scales back on its own instead of freezing.
- Yours to tune — ghost opacity, face shading, occlusion culling, entity render distance. Resource packs are respected and everything survives a world reload.
Tells you what's left to build
- Material list — a live bill of materials that fills in as you build:
N / M placed, what's left, stray blocks sitting where the schematic wants air, even the dyes and glow ink your signs need. It updates itself as the world streams in — no refresh button. - Status overlay — colour-codes the build in-world: green correct, amber wrong state (mis-rotated etc.), red wrong block, purple an extra block where air belongs. Show it as a thin outline or a full tint.
- Next-block highlight — points you at the next cell to place, aware of what's actually in your inventory and skipping anything you can't place yet.
Helps you place it
Turn on build assist ("easy place") and right-clicking on or near the ghost places the exact block the schematic wants — correct block and orientation. It uses normal placement, so it works in survival and never breaks your existing blocks.
Everything build assist gets right
- Gets the fiddly stuff right — repeater/comparator settings, candle / sea-pickle / snow counts, double slabs, open gates/doors/trapdoors, levers, and writing a sign's text on placement.
- Uses your tools — borrows a matching tool (each toggleable) from your hotbar, moved up from your inventory, or fabricated in creative: shovel for paths and campfires, flint & steel for lighting, axe for stripping logs, hoe for tilling, and — experimental, off by default — a water bucket for waterlogging.
- Hold to build — drag with right-click held to sweep across cells. Middle-click picks the cell's block into your hand.
- Stays out of your way — places past chests instead of opening them, won't litter blocks into spaces meant to be empty, and won't let you re-edit a block that's already correct.
- Pulls from your inventory — if you own the block but it's not on the hotbar, it swaps it into your hand for you, and refills when a stack runs out mid-build.
Build assist is off by default — bind a key or flip it in settings.
Lets you make your own schematics
Press B for the selection editor — built to work in survival, where you can't just fly:
- Freecam — the camera detaches and flies while your body stays frozen safely in place.
- Select regions — click two blocks to outline a box; Shift-click to add more, so one schematic can hold several regions.
- Resize with a gizmo — grab a corner for a colour-coded axis gizmo and drag, snapped to blocks. Handles draw through terrain so buried corners stay editable.
- Save — capture blocks, block entities and entities to a
.litematic, quick-export to yourschematics/folder or save-as. It drops in as a ghost immediately.
First launch
A short guided onboarding walks you through the essentials — opening the menu, build assist, the selection editor, and (if it finds one) offers to import your existing Litematica setup. Skip it any time; re-run it later from Mod Menu → Buildprint → Schematics.
Default hotkeys
Everything's rebindable in Options → Controls, under its own Buildprint and Buildprint Editor headings (not lumped into vanilla "Miscellaneous"). Defaults:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| M | Open the Buildprint menu |
| N | Toggle build assist ("easy place") |
| B | Open the selection editor (make a schematic) |
| . / , | Step the layer view up / down (auto-enables layer view) |
| unbound | Toggle printer mode (opt-in automation) |
| unbound | Cycle Show filter: all / unbuilt / wrong state / extra |
Selection editor keys
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| G | Save the current selection |
[ / ] |
Previous / next region |
| Delete | Delete the active region |
| H | Toggle the controls overlay |
Supported formats
Buildprint translates every format into one rich internal model, so you can open a schematic in any supported format — no proprietary lock-in.
| Format | Extension | Import | Export |
|---|---|---|---|
| Litematica | .litematic |
✅ | ✅ |
| Sponge schematic | .schem |
✅ | Planned |
| Classic schematic | .schematic |
✅ | Planned |
| Vanilla structure | .nbt |
✅ | Planned |
| Axiom blueprint | .bp |
✅ | Planned |
Format notes
Litematica .litematic is the canonical format Buildprint both reads and writes — the richest
widely-supported option (name, author, description, timestamps, multi-region). Classic .schematic
files run through a full pre-1.13 flattening table on import; Axiom .bp blueprints keep their block
entities and tags. Load a file via the OS-native picker, drop it onto the window, or drop it in your
schematics/ folder and it's discovered automatically.
Managing your builds
- Local tab — browse your
schematics/folder with subfolder navigation, recursive search, Recent and ★ Favourites, and a live folder watch. Selecting one shows a spinnable 3D preview (drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, shift-drag to pan) and its details. - Loaded tab — everything you've placed: toggle each on/off, rename, move (a facing-relative pad or typed coordinates), rotate, mirror, and slice to a single layer — all updating the ghost in real time.
- Placements are remembered per world and per server — your builds reappear where you left them when you rejoin.
Coming from Litematica?
On first launch Buildprint's onboarding offers to import your Litematica setup — which schematics you had placed and where — and recreates those placements. Your original files are left untouched. You can re-run it any time from Mod Menu → Buildprint → Schematics.
Requirements
- Minecraft 26.2+
- Fabric Loader 0.16+
- Fabric API
- Mod Menu + YACL (optional) — for the in-game settings screen
Client-side only — no server install, works on any server you can join.
Settings
Opinionated and uncluttered — no pointless toggles, no "enable mod" checkbox. Configure via Mod Menu → Buildprint:
- Rendering — ghost opacity, face shading, occlusion culling, entity render distance, status overlay (off / outline / tint)
- Schematics — remember placements, hide on lag, import from Litematica
- Build assist — auto-rotate, write sign text, supports-first, drag place, per-tool auto-use, pull from inventory, don't-place-extra + air-block whitelist, angel (mid-air) placement
- Performance — adapt-to-frame-rate tiers and overlay/reach tuning
Roadmap
- ✅ Loading, rendering, material list + status overlay, selection editor, build assist, printer mode, onboarding
- Sharing & sync — a marketplace, share codes, and live multiplayer sync (next up)
- Backport — a 1.21.x build alongside the current 26.x line
