ModsJava
Stencil
Litematica-style schematic holograms and Easy Place, no client mod needed. Free Minecraft Java mod for 26.1, 26.2.
⬇ Download on Spigot
Stencil
Litematica without the mod. Schematic holograms, layer view, material lists, a verifier and Easy Place — for vanilla clients.
Early access. Stencil is brand new and still rough around the edges. Everything below works and is covered by a built-in self test, but expect bugs, odd looks and missing polish for a while. Please report what you find in the discussion thread — every report gets read.
Litematica is the best building tool there is, and nobody can use it on your server unless they install a mod. Stencil moves the whole workflow to the server: a player drops a
.litematic in, types one command, and the build appears in front of them as a hologram they can walk through and build over — on a completely vanilla client. Bedrock-free, mod-free, nothing to install.
Litematica without the mod. Schematic holograms, layer view, material lists, a verifier and Easy Place — for vanilla clients.
Early access. Stencil is brand new and still rough around the edges. Everything below works and is covered by a built-in self test, but expect bugs, odd looks and missing polish for a while. Please report what you find in the discussion thread — every report gets read.
Features
- Holograms for vanilla players — every missing block of the schematic is drawn as a ghost block right where it belongs. Only you see yours; two players can have different builds up at once. Ghosts vanish as you place the real block.
- Loads real Litematica files — .litematic straight from the mod, plus WorldEdit / Sponge .schem (v1–v3) and vanilla structure .nbt. Load from the server's schematics folder or straight from a URL.
- Layer mode — show one layer at a time, or everything up to a layer, and step through the build floor by floor. This is also how you keep the hologram light on huge builds.
- Move, rotate, mirror — nudge the placement around, turn it in quarter steps, flip it. Block states turn with it (stairs, doors, logs, rails).
- Verifier — one command scans the build and glows what is wrong: cyan for missing, red for the wrong block, purple for extra blocks that shouldn't be there. Outlines show through walls, so you find that one mistake inside the wall. The scan runs off the main thread.
- Easy Place — right-click a ghost and the correct block, in the correct orientation, comes out of your inventory and into the world. Doors, beds and tall plants place both halves. Survival-legit: it costs the block and fires a normal BlockPlaceEvent, so claims and protection plugins keep their say.
- Material list — what the build needs, what is already placed, what you are carrying, in stacks and shulkers. In chat or in a native menu with item icons.
- Native menus — the whole thing is driven from Minecraft's built-in dialog screens: a hub with every toggle, a schematic picker, the material list. No chest GUIs.
- Paste and undo — admins can build the whole thing at once. Pasting is time-sliced so a 500k-block build never freezes a tick, and one command puts everything back. Chest contents and sign text survive the trip.
- Save your own — a wand and two corners write a proper .litematic you can open in the mod, block entities included.
- Remembers everything — your placement, its position, rotation, layer and toggles survive relogs and restarts.
- Built for performance — the hologram only ever draws the outer shell of the build, only within your radius, only what is not built yet, with a hard cap on entities per player and a diff so unchanged ghosts cost nothing. Loading and verifying happen off the main thread. Zero dependencies, ~180 KB.
- Every message is editable — MiniMessage messages.yml with a gradient / small-caps look out of the box.
Vanilla clients cannot draw translucent blocks, so Stencil draws each ghost as a smaller cube inside its block space with a soft glowing outline. It reads as a hologram and you can walk straight through it. The size, the outline and its colour are all in the config; set ghost-size: 1.0 and outline: false if you prefer solid-looking previews.
Commands
Code (Text):
/stencil the menu (aliases: /sten, /lit, /ghost)
/stencil load <file|url> load a schematic and place it at your feet
/stencil list [filter] schematics on the server
/stencil unload remove your placement
/stencil toggle hide / show the hologram
/stencil move [here|x y z] move the origin (~ works)
/stencil nudge <dir> [n] up/down/north/south/east/west/forward/back/left/right
/stencil rotate [cw|ccw|180] turn the placement
/stencil mirror [x|z|off] mirror it
/stencil layer [here|up|down|below|single|off|<y>]
/stencil radius <blocks> how far around you ghosts are drawn
/stencil materials [page] the material list
/stencil verify [on|off|now] highlight missing / wrong / extra blocks
/stencil easyplace [on|off] right-click ghosts to place the right block
/stencil info details about your placement
/stencil wand | pos1 | pos2 select an area
/stencil save <name> save the selection as a .litematic
/stencil paste [air] build the whole schematic (op)
/stencil undo undo your last paste (op)
/stencil reload reload config and messages (op)
/stencil selftest built-in self test (console / op)
/stencil load <file|url> load a schematic and place it at your feet
/stencil list [filter] schematics on the server
/stencil unload remove your placement
/stencil toggle hide / show the hologram
/stencil move [here|x y z] move the origin (~ works)
/stencil nudge <dir> [n] up/down/north/south/east/west/forward/back/left/right
/stencil rotate [cw|ccw|180] turn the placement
/stencil mirror [x|z|off] mirror it
/stencil layer [here|up|down|below|single|off|<y>]
/stencil radius <blocks> how far around you ghosts are drawn
/stencil materials [page] the material list
/stencil verify [on|off|now] highlight missing / wrong / extra blocks
/stencil easyplace [on|off] right-click ghosts to place the right block
/stencil info details about your placement
/stencil wand | pos1 | pos2 select an area
/stencil save <name> save the selection as a .litematic
/stencil paste [air] build the whole schematic (op)
/stencil undo undo your last paste (op)
/stencil reload reload config and messages (op)
/stencil selftest built-in self test (console / op)
Code (Text):
stencil.use load schematics and use the hologram (default: everyone)
stencil.url load from URLs (default: everyone)
stencil.easyplace easy place (default: everyone)
stencil.materials material lists (default: everyone)
stencil.verify the verifier (default: everyone)
stencil.save wand, corners and saving (default: everyone)
stencil.list list the schematics folder (default: everyone)
stencil.paste paste and undo (default: op)
stencil.bypass ignore world restrictions (default: op)
stencil.reload reload the config (default: op)
stencil.selftest run the self test (default: op)
stencil.url load from URLs (default: everyone)
stencil.easyplace easy place (default: everyone)
stencil.materials material lists (default: everyone)
stencil.verify the verifier (default: everyone)
stencil.save wand, corners and saving (default: everyone)
stencil.list list the schematics folder (default: everyone)
stencil.paste paste and undo (default: op)
stencil.bypass ignore world restrictions (default: op)
stencil.reload reload the config (default: op)
stencil.selftest run the self test (default: op)
Code (YAML):
preview:
radius : 32 # blocks around each player that get ghosts
max-ghosts : 2000 # entity cap per player; nearest blocks win
spawn-per-refresh : 500 # ghosts sent per refresh so nothing spikes
ghost-size : 0.6 # cube size inside the block (1.0 = solid)
outline : true # glowing outline around ghosts
outline-color : "#7DF9FF"
lit : true # full brightness so ghosts show at night
verify:
glow-missing : "#4FC3F7"
glow-wrong : "#FF5252"
glow-extra : "#E040FB"
rescan-seconds : 3 # quiet time after a block change before re-scanning
easy-place:
enabled-by-default : false
physics : true # refuse blocks that would pop off, update neighbours
fire-place-event : true # let protection plugins cancel the placement
take-from-inventory : true
paste:
millis-per-tick : 20 # time budget shared by all running pastes and saves
block-entities : true # restore chest contents, sign text, ...
limits:
max-volume : 8000000 # largest schematic (enclosing volume)
allow-urls : true
allow-subfolders : true
sources : # /stencil load site:abc -> base URL + abc
# site: "https://example.com/download/"
allowed-worlds : [ ] # empty = everywhere
radius : 32 # blocks around each player that get ghosts
max-ghosts : 2000 # entity cap per player; nearest blocks win
spawn-per-refresh : 500 # ghosts sent per refresh so nothing spikes
ghost-size : 0.6 # cube size inside the block (1.0 = solid)
outline : true # glowing outline around ghosts
outline-color : "#7DF9FF"
lit : true # full brightness so ghosts show at night
verify:
glow-missing : "#4FC3F7"
glow-wrong : "#FF5252"
glow-extra : "#E040FB"
rescan-seconds : 3 # quiet time after a block change before re-scanning
easy-place:
enabled-by-default : false
physics : true # refuse blocks that would pop off, update neighbours
fire-place-event : true # let protection plugins cancel the placement
take-from-inventory : true
paste:
millis-per-tick : 20 # time budget shared by all running pastes and saves
block-entities : true # restore chest contents, sign text, ...
limits:
max-volume : 8000000 # largest schematic (enclosing volume)
allow-urls : true
allow-subfolders : true
sources : # /stencil load site:abc -> base URL + abc
# site: "https://example.com/download/"
allowed-worlds : [ ] # empty = everywhere
- Requires Paper 26.1.2 or newer (or a Paper fork). Won't run on Spigot — the menus use Paper's dialog API and the ghosts use per-player entity visibility.
- Put files in plugins/Stencil/schematics (sub-folders are fine) or load them from a URL. The schematic appears at your feet; /stencil move and /stencil nudge put it where it belongs.
- Huge builds: the hologram never draws more than max-ghosts entities per player, so on a 200k-block build you will see the nearest 2000 missing blocks. Use layer mode — that is how you would build it with the mod anyway.
- Ghost blocks are display entities. They have no collision and no hitbox, they never save to disk, and they are cleaned up on quit, unload, reload and restart.
- Verify counts "extra" blocks only inside the schematic's bounding box. Run /stencil verify now once so the material list can subtract what is already built.
- Block states the server does not know (old names, modded blocks) are treated as air and counted in the load message.
- Run /stencil selftest from console after installing: it pastes a fixture, verifies it, draws and diffs ghosts, easy-places blocks with a stand-in player, saves and reloads a file, and prints a pass/fail list. 44 checks.
- This is an early release. The core is solid and tested, but the in-game look and feel is still being tuned and you will hit rough edges. Found a bug or have an idea? Post in the discussion thread and I'll take a look.
Stencil is a free Minecraft Java mod. Compatible with Minecraft 26.1, 26.2. Downloaded 3 times (via Spigot). Download it and open it directly in the game.