# Surface maps

Plugin exports now produce a flat, north-up map rather than a textured aerial
render. The map uses up to 128 cells along its longest side, chooses the dominant
surface material in each cell, shades slopes and water depth, and retains the
original world bounds. Transparent glass and small vegetation do not hide the
ground. Unknown blocks use stone gray; material colors are approximations.

Uncaptured terrain appears as parchment. The saved WebP uses lossless compression
and nearest-neighbor scaling, with a subtle grid. Fabric maps retain their
client-captured colors and are also compressed losslessly. The web preview,
player guessing map and results share a parchment frame.

New plugin uploads automatically use the new renderer. Existing processed images
are not regenerated merely by restarting the web server. For an unpublished
original capture, use the existing `npm run reprocess -- <dataset UUID>` workflow
with the worker stopped, then restart the worker. Published revisions retain
their approved media.

To create just a local map image from a retained export, without rerendering
panoramas or changing stored data:

```sh
npm run render:map -- path/to/terrain.json.gz path/to/map.webp
```

The parchment is a local SVG UI asset; no remote textures are required.