Settings

Beginner

The Settings dialog lets you customise how Buildopia looks, how the camera feels, and how the interface adapts to your needs. Open it from the hamburger menu in the top-right corner of the screen — look for the Settings item near the top of the dropdown. The dialog has seven tabs: Display, Camera, Accessibility, Keybindings, Advanced, Builder, and Membership. All changes apply instantly and are saved automatically to your browser.

Display

The Display tab controls the overall look of the app — the colour theme and the accent colours used for highlights, active states, and selection outlines throughout the interface.

Theme

Three theme options are available:

Option	What it does
Dark	The default dark-panel UI.
Light	Switches all panels and backgrounds to a light colour scheme.
System	Follows your operating system's dark/light preference automatically. If you switch your OS theme while Buildopia is open, the app updates immediately without a reload.

Accent Colours

Accent colours tint panels, highlights, active buttons, selection outlines, and similar UI elements throughout the app. There are four built-in palettes to choose from, each represented by a split-diagonal swatch showing the primary and secondary colours together:

Palette	Primary	Secondary
Forest	Green	Amber
Ocean	Blue	Teal
Sunset	Coral red	Amber
Berry	Purple	Pink

If none of the presets suit you, use the Primary and Secondary colour pickers below the swatches to choose any colours you like. Picking a custom colour switches the palette to Custom and deselects any preset. Selecting a preset swatch at any point resets both pickers to that palette's colours.

Note: The Primary accent is the one you'll see most across the app — active states, selected borders, sliders, the active tab underline, and so on. The Secondary accent appears in a smaller number of places (the active template button and section headings in the Help panel). If you only care about one colour, Primary is the one to change.

Camera

The Camera tab gives you fine-grained control over how the 3D viewport responds to your input. Every setting here takes effect immediately in the main viewport — no reload required, and the additional viewport (if open) updates at the same time.

Sensitivity

Three independent sliders let you dial in how quickly each camera action responds to input. The range is 0.25× (much slower than default) to 3× (much faster), and the current multiplier is shown live as you drag:

Slider	What it affects
Orbit	How far the camera rotates per unit of drag distance in Orbit mode (mouse drag on desktop; single-finger drag on mobile).
Pan	How far the camera slides per unit of drag distance in Pan mode (also covers two-finger pan on mobile and trackpad).
Zoom	How much distance the camera covers per mouse-wheel tick, pinch unit, or keyboard press.

Tip: If the camera feels like it swings too far when you nudge it, try bringing Orbit down to around 0.5×. If zooming in and out takes too many scroll ticks, try bumping Zoom up to 1.5× or 2×.

Invert Axes

Two checkboxes let you reverse the direction of rotation in Orbit mode:

Option	What it reverses
Invert X	Horizontal drag direction — dragging right rotates the camera left instead of right.
Invert Y	Vertical drag direction — dragging up rotates the camera down instead of up.

These only affect Orbit mode drag. Pan, zoom, and camera presets are unaffected.

Field of View

The FOV slider adjusts the camera's field of view between 30° and 90°, defaulting to 45°. A lower value gives a tighter, more telephoto look with less perspective distortion — useful for precision work on facades or for comparing heights across a build. A higher value gives a wider, more immersive angle that lets you see more of the scene at once.

Default Starting View

By default, Buildopia opens each session at a fixed camera angle and distance. If you prefer to start at your own preferred angle, you can snapshot the current camera position and make it the default:

Orbit, pan, and zoom the main viewport to the exact angle and distance you want.
Open Settings → Camera and click Set current view as default.

From that point on, every new session opens at that saved angle. The note below the buttons confirms whether a custom default is active or whether the automatic default is in use. Click Clear at any time to go back to the automatic default.

Tip: This is purely a starting position — you can still orbit, pan, and zoom freely once you're in the app. It just saves you from having to re-navigate to your preferred viewpoint every session.

Accessibility

The Accessibility tab has three options, each applying instantly and saving automatically. They can also be combined freely — for example, High Contrast and a Colour-blind Mode can be active at the same time.

Reduced Motion

When enabled, Reduced Motion disables animations and smooth transitions throughout the interface:

UI panel transitions and animations are suppressed.
Camera easing is disabled — when you click a camera preset or the camera is moved programmatically, it snaps directly to the target position instead of gliding there smoothly.

Buildopia also respects your operating system's own reduced-motion preference automatically. If you've turned on Reduce Motion in your OS accessibility settings, Buildopia behaves as if this option is enabled, even if you haven't set it here explicitly.

High Contrast

High Contrast strengthens panel borders, dividers, and secondary text to make UI elements easier to distinguish. It doesn't change any colours — it only increases the visual weight of borders and reduces the step between foreground and background elements. Useful in bright environments or for users who find low-contrast interfaces hard to read.

Colour-blind Mode

Colour-blind Mode applies a colour correction filter across the entire app — including the 3D viewport canvas and all material thumbnails. Three simulation modes are available, corresponding to the three most common forms of colour vision deficiency:

Mode	Simulates	What it corrects for
Protanopia	Red-blind	Reduced sensitivity to red wavelengths. Reds appear darker and can be confused with greens or blacks.
Deuteranopia	Green-blind	Reduced sensitivity to green wavelengths. The most common form — greens and reds can appear similar.
Tritanopia	Blue-blind	Reduced sensitivity to blue wavelengths. Blues and greens, and yellows and reds, can appear similar.

The filter is implemented as an SVG colour matrix applied to the whole page, so it covers every pixel on screen — not just the material palette. Select Off to remove it.

Note: Colour-blind Mode is a correction aid, not a simulation. It shifts the colour output toward values that are easier to distinguish for users with that condition — it doesn't simulate what a colour-blind person sees.

Keybindings

The Keybindings tab lets you reassign every keyboard shortcut in Buildopia to a key of your choosing, and change which mouse buttons are used for Pan Camera, Move Camera, and Draw Mode.

Keyboard shortcuts

Every assignable shortcut is listed in a table. Click the key badge next to a shortcut to enter rebind mode — the badge highlights and waits for your next keypress. Press the key you want to assign, and it's saved immediately. Press Escape to cancel without changing anything.

If you assign a key that's already in use by another shortcut, the conflict is flagged inline so you can resolve it before it causes unexpected behaviour.

Mouse buttons

Three mouse button assignments can be changed: Pan Camera, Move Camera, and Draw Mode. Click the button badge and then press the mouse button you want to assign. Middle-click and right-click are both valid assignments.

Resetting to defaults

The Reset to defaults button at the bottom of the Keybindings tab reverts all keyboard shortcuts and mouse button assignments to their original values in one click. Individual shortcuts cannot be reset independently — the reset applies to everything at once.

Note: Keybinding changes save automatically as you make them, so there's no confirmation step before they take effect. If you want to experiment without committing, note your current assignments first and use Reset to defaults to restore them.

Advanced

The Advanced tab holds performance-affecting settings that are kept separate from the main tabs to make it clear they carry a cost. Changes here apply instantly.

Sun-Cast Shadows

When enabled, a directional shadow pass runs across the entire scene — every block casts a shadow based on the sun's position. This adds significant depth and realism to builds, especially at low sun angles where long shadows reveal the three-dimensional structure of a build at a glance. It is disabled by default because it carries a performance cost: shadow rendering requires an additional depth render pass on each frame, which can reduce frame rate noticeably on lower-end hardware or very large builds.

Tip: If shadows cause noticeable slowdown, try reducing your grid size or turning off shadows before generating terrain or performing large block operations — then re-enable them to review the finished result.

Sun Angle (Height)

Visible when Sun-Cast Shadows is on. Controls the sun's elevation above the horizon, from 5° (nearly grazing the ground — very long shadows that stretch across the whole scene) to 80° (near-overhead — short, compact shadows beneath each block). The default is somewhere in the mid-range. Lower angles are dramatic and good for showcasing build silhouettes; higher angles are less distracting when you're focused on building rather than presentation.

Sun Angle (Direction)

Visible when Sun-Cast Shadows is on. Rotates the light source 360° around the scene. The value is a compass bearing: 0° places the sun to the north (shadows fall south), 90° to the east (shadows fall west), 180° to the south, and 270° to the west. Adjusting the direction is useful for ensuring shadows fall in a way that complements your build's orientation — for example, rotating the light so shadows fall into alcoves or courtyards rather than away from them.

Max Grid Size Override

By default, each grid axis (Width, Height, Length) is capped at 100 blocks. The three inputs in this section let you raise that cap independently for each axis, up to a maximum of 1000. Changes take effect immediately — the sidebar Grid Size sliders update their range as soon as you type a new value here.

Warning: Very large grids — particularly anything above 200 on any axis — can cause significant slowdown during building, rendering, and especially during operations like cave generation, floating-chunk removal, and Layer Sheet export. Only raise the cap if you have a specific large-scale project in mind and are prepared for the performance trade-off. The default 100-block cap is recommended for general use.

Time of Day

Sets the ambient lighting preset for the scene. Four options are available:

Option	Character
Morning	Warm, low-angle light with a gentle golden tint — good for showcasing east-facing facades and giving builds a soft sunrise look.
Day	Neutral overhead light. The default setting and the most accurate for evaluating materials and colours as they were designed.
Evening	Rich golden-hour tones with a warmer sky — flattering for presentation screenshots and builds with warm-coloured materials.
Night	Cool, reduced-ambient light that darkens the scene considerably. Useful for previewing how a build reads in low-light conditions.

Time of Day works independently of Sun-Cast Shadows — the ambient and sky colour shift regardless of whether the shadow pass is enabled. Changes apply instantly.

Builder

The Builder tab controls your default tool preset — the mode the app opens in each session.

Tool Preset

Two options are available: Basic and Advanced. Basic opens the sidebar in its simplified layout with a curated tool set. Advanced exposes every tool and option. Whichever you select becomes the default on load; you can still switch between presets at any time from inside the app without returning to Settings.

Membership

The Membership tab is where you activate and manage a Buildopia membership.

Entering a Key

Paste or type your membership key into the input field and tap Activate. The key is validated immediately — once accepted, your status updates on the spot and the perks below become available.

Status & Perks

Once a key is active, the tab shows your current membership status and a list of the five member perks:

Custom Accent Colours — unlocks additional accent colour options beyond the four built-in palettes in the Display tab.
Settings Export/Import — lets you export your entire Settings configuration to a file and import it on another device or browser, so your preferences follow you wherever you use Buildopia.
Community Flair — adds a gold ★ badge to your cards in the Community Builds gallery so other players can identify member submissions.
Gold Logo — applies a gold tint to the Buildopia logo in the interface as a visual marker of membership status.
Username Field — enables the Username field in the Community Builds share panel, which pre-fills your author name automatically on every submission so you don't have to type it each time.

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