Tepox Better Third Person Cameras

Tepox Camera

Tepox Camera is my take on a more flexible third-person camera system for Minecraft.

It adds several new camera modes to the normal F5 camera cycle, including free third-person movement, shoulder cameras, smooth zoom, crosshair interaction support, and server-controlled camera distance limits.

Camera Modes

The F5 camera cycle is:

First Person → Vanilla Third Person Back → Shoulder Follow → Vanilla Third Person Front → Free Third Person → Shoulder Camera → First Person

Shoulder Follow

A shoulder camera that behaves more like Minecraft’s normal third-person camera.
Press Tab to quickly switch the camera between the right and left shoulder.

• The camera is positioned over the player’s shoulder.
• The player always faces the same direction as the camera.
• Moving the mouse rotates both the camera and the player.
• W/S move forward and backward.
• A/D strafe left and right.
• Camera distance can be adjusted normally.

This mode is useful if you want a shoulder camera without the completely independent movement of the other custom cameras.

Free Third Person

A fully free third-person camera.

• Rotate the camera around the player without forcing the player to face the same direction.
• Movement is relative to the camera.
• Move forward, backward, sideways, or diagonally freely.
• The character turns naturally depending on movement and interactions.

Free Shoulder Camera

Works like Free Third Person, but places the camera over the player’s shoulder.

Press Tab to quickly switch the camera between the right and left shoulder.

The player can still move independently from the direction of the camera while keeping the shoulder-style perspective.

Interaction and Aiming

The custom cameras are fully usable during normal gameplay.

The crosshair remains active, allowing you to:

• Break blocks
• Attack entities
• Interact with blocks
• Use items
• Use bows
• Use shields
• Pick blocks and entities normally

Holding Right Click makes the player face the direction of the crosshair while using an item.

Using Left Click also makes the player face the targeted block or entity for a short moment so attacks and block breaking look more natural in third person.

Camera Distance

Each custom camera keeps its own camera distance.

Default controls:

• Up Arrow — Move the camera closer
• Down Arrow — Move the camera farther away
• P — Reset the camera distance to the vanilla default of 4

All keys can be changed from Minecraft’s normal Controls menu.

Camera zoom uses whole-number distances, but the visual movement between distances is smoothly interpolated.

Hold Acceleration

Holding the zoom keys gradually increases the distance step:

• 0–5 seconds — steps of 1
• 5–10 seconds — steps of 2
• 10–15 seconds — steps of 4
• 15+ seconds — steps of 10

Configuration

Tepox Camera works on both the client and server.

The server or world host controls the minimum and maximum camera distance available to players.

Default values:

• Minimum Distance: 1
• Maximum Distance: 14
• Reset Distance: 4

Rules:

• Minimum distance must always be at least 1.
• Maximum distance must always be equal to or greater than the minimum distance.
• Maximum distance has no normal gameplay limit.

In multiplayer, the server settings are authoritative and connected players automatically use the limits configured by the server.

Server Commands

Server owners and administrators can change the allowed camera distance directly with commands.

Set Minimum Distance

/tepoxcamera_set mindistance <value>

Example:

/tepoxcamera_set mindistance 1

Set Maximum Distance

/tepoxcamera_set maxdistance <value>

Example:

/tepoxcamera_set maxdistance 14

The same distance rules used by the configuration menu also apply to commands:

• mindistance must be at least 1.
• mindistance cannot be greater than maxdistance.
• maxdistance cannot be lower than mindistance.

Changes are saved to the server configuration and are immediately synchronized with connected players.

If you want to completely lock the camera to a single distance, simply set both values to the same number.

Example:

/tepoxcamera_set mindistance 4
/tepoxcamera_set maxdistance 4

This forces all custom cameras to stay at distance 4.

These commands can be used by server administrators, operators, the dedicated server console, and the integrated-world host.

Controls

Control	Default Key
Camera Closer	Up Arrow
Camera Farther	Down Arrow
Reset Camera Distance	P
Change Camera Mode	F5

The zoom controls can be reassigned from Minecraft’s normal Controls menu.

Author

Tepox00