Constellation 3D

approvedunreviewed

by loopman90

Explore your vault in an animated 3D note space with discovery modes, graph filters, journeys, and visual presets.

↓ 68 downloadsUpdated 7d agoMIT
Install in ObsidianView on GitHub

Constellation 3D

Your Obsidian notes, connected in a 3D space.

Download the plugin · Installation guide · Report an issue

About the plugin

Constellation 3D is an Obsidian plugin that turns your vault into an interactive 3D map. Each note becomes a node, its links become connections, and folders or tags become clusters. Rotate, pan, and zoom to explore how your ideas fit together, then click a node to open its note.

Use it to discover overlooked connections, follow a route between notes, or focus on one part of a large vault. Customize the scene with visual styles, color profiles, backgrounds, and optional animations—from gently moving notes to a camera flight through your network. The Quick Menu and Control Panel let you adjust the view inside the graph.

The graph opens with a static camera and animation paused. Performance controls let you limit visible notes, connections, and animation frame rate. Your vault data stays local.

Constellation 3D showing connected notes in a dark Star Map view.

An actual vault in Constellation 3D. Notes form clusters, with links connecting the groups.

Features at a glance

FeatureWhat you can do
3D navigationRotate, pan, zoom, drag notes, and use keyboard camera controls.
ClustersGroup by folder or tag; adjust spacing; collapse, isolate, or hide groups.
Search and filtersFind notes by name and filter by folder, tag, date, or connection count.
Visual customizationChoose 22 visual styles, color profiles, backgrounds, labels, glow, and depth guides.
Optional animationsChoose Spaceflight, Swarm, Chaos, Blob Order, orbiting notes, and animated connections.
Paths and discoveryHighlight linked routes and explore recent notes, forgotten notes, hubs, and orphans.
Controls in the graphCustomize the Quick Menu and change settings without leaving the view.
Performance settingsSet rendering quality, visible note and link limits, and animation frame rate.
View the full feature list
  • Explore your graph: switch between the whole vault, notes around the active note, and the active note's direct neighbors. Set how far local exploration reaches.
  • Find notes: search by note name, then narrow the graph by folder, tag, last-modified date, or minimum number of connections. Folder filters are case-insensitive path matches; tag filters match note tags and frontmatter tags.
  • See notes as clusters: group notes by top-level folder, full folder path, or first tag; arrange the groups as islands, a grid, or a spiral; and adjust cluster and note spacing. Cross-cluster links are highlighted. Right-click any note to collapse or expand its cluster, isolate that cluster, or hide it.
  • Choose a visual style: switch among Constellation, Timeline Map, Mind Palace, Circuit Minimal, Archive Fog, Focus Lens, Thread Weaver, Research Board, Signal Radar, Matrix Hacker, Star Map, Star System, Aqua Mint, Deep Space, Neon, Minimal, Soft Glow, Neural Bloom, Satellite View, Glass Minimal, Academic Light, and Ink Map. In Star System, notes appear as stars while folder clusters become planets with orbit rings. Choose the Star System preset for matching galaxy colors, nebula, and cluster-orbit motion.
  • Visual styles change the graph's layout, note marker shapes, connection paths, backdrop, and focus or glow effects. Color schemes are independent and recolor the graph without replacing the selected visual style. Black and white backgrounds stay flat, while the note marker shapes and layouts still respond to the visual style.
  • Choose colors independently: pick from profiles such as Age Gradient, Aqua Mint, Archive Dust, Arctic, Blueprint, Candy, City Nights, Cluster Neon, Constellation White, Copper Blue, Crystal, Cyberpunk, Electric Lime, Focus Fade, Glacier, Graphite, High Contrast, Infrared, Ink, Lava, Library Night, Meadow, Midnight Gold, Moss & Gold, Night Vision, Nord, Ocean Depths, Ocean Sunset, Paper Minimal, Pearl, Polar Night, Prism Flow, Red Alert, Rose Garden, Ruby Graph, Sepia Archive, Signal Strength, Soft Lavender, Solar System, Solarized, Star Map, Vaporwave, Violet Storm, and Zen Garden, alongside the existing palettes. Single-hue profiles keep a consistent color family; age, connection, and cluster profiles vary colors to show their data. Set custom HEX colors and Rainbow Flow speed in the Control Panel.
  • Animate and tune the space: Static Camera is the default and keeps the view still until you move it. You can choose 3D camera orbit, Spaceflight to fly through notes with moving star streaks, notes orbiting clusters, a cluster camera tour, moving notes, Swarm, Chaos, or Blob Order from the Quick Menu or Control Panel. Choosing a moving style enables animation; Reduce Motion pauses note movement. Pick Nebula, Aurora, Deep Space Grid, Deep Void, Starfield, Horizon Perspective, Depth Bands, Topographic Contours, Blueprint Grid, Warm Paper, Black, or White. FAR, MID, and NEAR perspective guides help show distance. Tune star particles; choose flowing particles, pulses, drawing lines, or moving dashes for links and route previews. Link animations follow real note links, including those between clusters, and selecting one starts animation automatically. Connections between separate Obsidian vaults are not available because each graph shows one vault at a time. Tune color palettes, perspective depth, camera and animation speed, note movement distance, glow, and reduced motion.
  • Control settings in the graph: use the Quick Menu for animation, Control Panel, Fit Network, Optimize View, Refresh, Note Path, and Clear Path actions. In Control Panel → Interface → Quick Menu buttons, choose which controls and selectors appear. Compact action buttons use icons with descriptive tooltips and accessible labels. The in-view Control Panel groups settings into Camera, Performance, Appearance, Graph, Motion, Discovery, Interface, and Hidden Items, so you can adjust the view without leaving the graph.
  • Use keyboard controls: with the graph focused, press ← / → to rotate, ↑ / ↓ to tilt, + / − to zoom, and W / A / S / D to pan. Press Space to pause or resume animation, F to fit the network, O to optimize the view, R to refresh, or Esc to close the Control Panel. Hold Shift with an arrow key for a larger camera step. Shortcuts are ignored while typing in an input, dropdown, or button.
  • Take a guided journey: browse recent or forgotten notes, hubs, hidden gems, and orphans. Start automatic travel or move one note at a time.
  • Inspect and organize visually: click a node to open its note; hover to highlight direct neighbors; right-click to pin or hide a specific note or its folder cluster, or preview a route through linked notes. Restore items individually from Hidden items in the Control Panel.
  • Personalize the view: use visual presets and color schemes, then adjust labels, node icons, the FAR / MID / NEAR depth rings, cluster halos, node size, link thickness, and the FPS display. Turn the whole scene background or its particles off independently.
  • Disable effects independently: pause all animation, or turn off moving notes, animated links, route motion, and animated color profiles separately in Control Panel → Motion. This lets camera movement continue while individual effects stay still.
  • Customize the interface: turn the header, graph title, node/link totals, Quick Menu, and bottom dashboard on or off. Choose each Quick Menu button and selector independently, then show only the counters and recent changes you want, alongside the existing label, link, icon, depth, and halo controls.
  • Keep large graphs responsive: choose Auto, Balanced, or Performance under Control Panel → Performance → Rendering quality. Set Maximum visible notes, Maximum visible links, and Animation frame rate in the same section. These budgets limit drawing while the complete graph remains available for filtering and route lookup; pinned and route notes may exceed the note budget. Auto adapts node and link detail to graph size and drawing time; balanced modes keep active, pinned, route, and cluster representative notes visible. Enable Performance metrics under Performance to see graph build time, draw time, and the current quality. Search waits briefly until you pause typing before rebuilding the graph. For extra smoothness, pause animation or turn down background particles and link display.
  • Arrange the canvas: drag a note node to reposition it, drag the background to orbit the 3D view, or switch to Pan mode to move the whole canvas. Scroll to zoom; Fit Network resets the view, while Optimize View automatically frames all currently visible notes.

Screenshots

View four more screenshots

All screenshots below use the same display width. Click an image to open the original.

Multicolor clusters

Multicolor note groups with a starfield background and depth guides.

Monochrome network

A dense vault network displayed with a monochrome palette.

Large vault — green palette

A large vault with green nodes, dense connections, and the Quick Menu open.

Large vault — blue palette

A large vault network displayed with blue and cyan notes.

Install in Obsidian

No coding, terminal, or build tools are needed.

  1. Download the plugin files. Open the latest release and download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from its Assets list. Your browser may ask where to save each file; save all three somewhere easy to find, such as your Downloads folder.

  2. Open your vault's plugin folder. In your file manager, open the folder where your Obsidian vault is stored. Show hidden files if needed, then open .obsidian, then plugins. If there is no plugins folder, create one.

    • Mac: In Finder, press Command + Shift + . to show hidden files.
    • Windows: In File Explorer, choose View → Show → Hidden items.

  3. Install the plugin. Inside .obsidian/plugins, create a folder named exactly constellation-three-d. Move the three downloaded files directly into that folder. Do not put them in another folder inside it. The final layout must be:

    Your vault/
└── .obsidian/
    └── plugins/
        └── constellation-three-d/
            ├── main.js
            ├── manifest.json
            └── styles.css

    If you are updating an existing installation, replace the old constellation-three-d folder with the new one.

  4. Enable it. Restart Obsidian. Open Settings → Community plugins. If Restricted mode is enabled, turn it off and confirm. Under Installed plugins, turn on Constellation 3D.

  5. Open the graph. Open the command palette with Command + P on Mac or Ctrl + P on Windows. Search for Open Constellation 3D and select it. You can also click its orbit icon in the left ribbon.

For the illustrated walkthrough and troubleshooting tips, visit the installation guide.

If it does not appear

  • Check that the folder is named exactly constellation-three-d and that manifest.json is directly inside it, not one folder deeper.
  • Confirm that you copied it into the .obsidian/plugins folder for the vault you currently have open.
  • Restart Obsidian, then check Settings → Community plugins → Installed plugins again.
  • If the graph is empty, link notes with Obsidian's [[double brackets]] syntax and press Refresh in Constellation 3D.

Controls and settings

  • Drag a note to move it. Drag empty space to rotate; choose Pan mode in the Quick Bar to move the canvas instead. Scroll to zoom, or use the Control Panel's Camera sliders for precise rotation, tilt, and zoom.
  • Click Optimize View to center and scale the currently visible graph. Right-click a note to hide that note or its cluster; use the Control Panel's Hidden items section to restore individual items or show everything again.
  • Right-click a note and choose Collapse cluster to replace its folder's notes with one summary node. Click the summary or choose Expand cluster to restore its notes. Choose Isolate cluster to focus on one folder, then right-click it and choose Show all clusters to return to the full graph.
  • Use Start Travel, ‹, and › for automatic or manual note journeys.
  • Choose Spaceflight to fly the camera along linked notes while star streaks rush outward from the center. Choose Swarm, Chaos, or Blob Order for additional note movement styles. Notes Orbit Clusters and Moving Notes are also available; use the Animation button to pause or resume movement.
  • Notes can be grouped by top-level folder, full folder path, or first tag. Groups appear as spaced cluster islands by default; choose a grid or spiral under Control Panel → Graph → Cluster arrangement. Cross-cluster note links are highlighted so you can follow connections between groups.
  • Click Note Path in the Quick Menu, then click a start note and a destination note to highlight the shortest linked route. Click Clear Path to remove it. Route highlights remain visible when regular links are hidden.
  • Animate a route: choose Glow, Traveling comet, Draw the route, or Moving dashes under Control Panel → Motion → Route animation. Route motion continues when the general 3D animation is paused; Reduce motion pauses it.
  • Click a node to open the note. Right-click for pin, hide, and route-preview actions.
  • Click Control Panel in the graph toolbar to adjust Camera, Performance, Appearance, Graph, Motion, Discovery, Interface, and Hidden Items settings without opening Obsidian's main settings. The groups are collapsible; Camera, Performance, and Motion open first, while Appearance and Graph are available when needed. Plugin configuration is also available under Settings → Constellation 3D.

Privacy and vault access

The plugin reads Markdown note paths, modification times, tags, and Obsidian's local resolved links to build the graph and counters. It uses Obsidian's metadata cache for note links and cached tag fields; it does not read note bodies or send vault data to a server. It uses the cached links to find connected notes. It enumerates all Markdown notes only when Include floating notes is enabled (off by default) or Orphan Hunt is selected, since those features need to find unlinked notes.

Releases and development

Every push to main automatically increments the patch version in manifest.json and versions.json, creates a matching Git tag and GitHub Release, publishes main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css, and creates GitHub artifact attestations for those files. The bot's version commit does not trigger another release.

The installation guide is in site/ and deploys through .github/workflows/pages.yml. The plugin is plain JavaScript and requires no build step.

For plugin developers

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