Minecraft how to make resource pack

Tutorials/Creating resource pack add-ons

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Summary [ ]

This tutorial is intended for beginners! If you are looking for specific component details, check the Entity Component Reference Guide. The topics that this tutorial will cover are:

Time Required [ ]

This tutorial should take around 1 to 1.5 hours to complete.

Required Tools [ ]

You will need the following programs to follow along with this tutorial:

A text editor [ ]

Any text editor should work but I would suggest using some sort of programming IDE. Notepad++ is an excellent, and FREE, text editor with syntax highlighting for lots of programming languages. You can download Notepad++ from here: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

An image editing program [ ]

MS Paint will work for modifying most textures, but will not work for saving out textures that have transparency (like the chicken’s). GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free image editing program that will allow you to save out transparent images. You can download GIMP from here: https://www.gimp.org/

Getting Started [ ]

We are going to start off small and teach you how to make a resource pack. Resource packs are add-ons that can modify textures, models, animations, music sounds, user interfaces, and languages. This tutorial will be focusing specifically on modifying textures.

Creating a resource pack [ ]

Start off by navigating to our resource_packs folder. Your file path should look something like this:

Once you are in the resource pack folder, create a new folder and name it: Tutorial_Resource_Pack. Then, open that folder.

The first thing we need to do is create a pack_manifest.json file. This file is going to contain data about our resource pack such as the name of our pack, the description of our resource pack that shows up in game, and a universally unique identifier (UUID).

A quick note about UUIDS [ ]

Creating a JSON file [ ]

To create a JSON file, right click in the Tutorial_Resource_Pack folder and go to New->Text Document. Name this file “pack_manifest.json”.

If you can’t see file extensions, you can turn them on by going to the View menu in the file explorer and checking the check box for file name extensions.

pack_manifest.json [ ]

Open pack_manifest.json in a text editor of your choice and copy or type the following:

Alternatively, you can copy the included file called “Resource_pack_manifest.json” into your Tutorial_Resource_Pack folder and rename it to “pack_manifest.json”.

This file is in the JSON data format! We won’t go into specifics about the format now, but be aware about how things are laid out. Be very careful not to forget quotation marks, colons, and curly or square brackets. Missing one of these can lead to your Resource Pack not working correctly!

Testing our Pack [ ]

Now we are ready to test it out in game! Launch Minecraft and create a new world. On the left side of the screen scroll down and click on Resource Packs. On the right side of the screen scroll until you see “Tutorial Texture Pack”. Your game should look something like this if you used the above code:

Troubleshooting [ ]

If you don’t see your pack in game, make sure your pack_manifest.json is correct. Look for any missing curly braces < >, commas, colons :, quotation marks “”, or square brackets [ ]. Remember for each open brace, quotation, or square bracket, you must have a closing brace, quotation, or square bracket.

Creating an Icon [ ]

As you may have noticed, our pack does not have an icon! If you do not specify an icon, a pink and black checkerboard texture will show up next to your pack.

In the image editor of your choice, create a new image with a size of 64 by 64 pixels.

To do this with MS paint:

Once you have the correct canvas size, draw whatever you want your icon to be. For this tutorial, we’ve created a crudely drawn smiley face:

Now if we launch the game and go to the resource packs section of create world it should look something like this:

Click on the tutorial resource pack to add it to the world you are making!

Modifying an Entity’s texture [ ]

Now that we have our resource pack set up, let’s modify the creeper’s texture!

However, before we can do some painting, we need to set up the folder structure that Minecraft expects resource packs to be in. To do this, do the following:

Your folder should now look like:

Now that we have the normal creeper texture, open it up in the image editor of your choice. It should look something like this:

You might notice your texture looking small, make sure to zoom in on the texture. In MS Paint you can control magnification in the bottom right hand corner of the window with the slider.

A quick note on textures [ ]

If you’ve never seen a texture before, the above image might surprise you. The best way to think about it is like wrapping a gift with wrapping paper, but instead our wrapping paper is our texture. Here is how the creeper’s texture is laid out:

Areas with matching colors face the same direction (i.e. Red areas are always the front of a cube).

How this looks in game:

Not every texture is laid out in the same way, you will need to experiment and find out how each entity’s texture is laid out. Advanced users can look at the mobs.json file in the model folder to find where the textures UV’s are for each body part.

Now it’s time to be creative! Edit the creeper however you want. I’m just going to add a headband for sake of simplicity.

A note on texture file formats [ ]

Testing our Resource Pack [ ]

Results [ ]

If you decide you want to make some changes to your texture, just save and quit the level, close the game, edit your texture, relaunch the game, and follow the steps above to create a new world and attach your resource pack to it again. Note that if you launch the last world, you will not see the changes. This is because when you create a world with an add-on attached, it copies your add-ons into the world file. This means you will have 2 different versions of your pack. As you continue to work on the one in the resource_packs folder, the one attached to your world will become out of date.

Alternatively, you can work directly on the pack attached to the world to avoid having to create a world every time. You can find the pack inside of the resource_packs folder in the world’s folder. However, if you then want to add this add-on to another world, you will need to manually copy it back into the com.mojang/resource_packs folder.

Challenge [ ]

Using what you know now, create a new texture for pigs and for chickens.

Block Textures [ ]

Now that we’ve gone through the process for an entity, changing textures for a block should seem straightforward. Let’s create a new texture for our stone block.

To create a new stone texture:

Here is my new stone texture:

and how it looks in game:

Challenge 2 [ ]

Congratulations! Now that you can create your own block textures, try making a new texture for the furnace.

HINT: furnaces use different textures for front, side, top, and front when turned on, make sure to edit all of them.

Item Textures – Challenge 3 [ ]

Creating a new item texture is like making a new block texture. Follow the same steps as above but make sure to make a folder called “items” in your textures folder and place your item textures there. Remember, you can always look at the Vanilla Minecraft resource pack as an example (/Vanilla_Resource_Pack/textures/items).

Environment Textures [ ]

You can also change the textures for clouds, the moon, the rain, the snow, the sun, and the cracking animation that plays when you break blocks. These textures should be put into a folder called “environment” in the textures folder.

Trouble shooting textures [ ]

If your texture is not showing up in game, check the following things:

Congratulations [ ]

You’ve completed this tutorial and should now know how to create your own resource pack add-ons!

Exporting and Sharing [ ]

Now that you’ve created a resource pack, you probably want to share it with friends! To do this, perform the following:

Introduction to Behavior Packs

Before building your first Add-On for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, you will need to create a pack to hold your custom content. There are two types of packs that a creator can make: resource packs and behavior packs. A behavior pack is a folder structure that contains files that drive entity behaviors, loot drops, spawn rules, items, recipes, and trade tables. This tutorial covers how behavior packs are created and how to add behaviors to an in-game cow entity to make it aggressive.

In this tutorial, you will learn the following:

Sample Behavior Pack

There is a sample behavior pack available at the Microsoft samples Github. it may be used to understand the structure of behavior packs and to check your work after the tutorial.

Requirements

It’s recommended that the following be completed before beginning this tutorial.

Building the Behavior Pack

A behavior pack contains files that creators (like you!) use to add, remove, or alter gameplay behavior of entities within Minecraft. An entity’s behavior file is what makes each entity do certain actions, like how a chicken follows a player who’s holding seeds.

For Minecraft to find and use your behavior files, you have to set up the folders and files in a particular structure. This tutorial will guide you through creating this folder and file structure.

Create a folder

In this section, you will create a folder called My_BEHAVIOR_Pack. Well, actually you don’t have to call it that. In fact, you can name this folder anything you want, but the other folders have to be named exactly like this tutorial says so that Minecraft knows where to look.

Create the manifest file

To load a behavior pack into Minecraft, you will need to create a manifest file. The behavior pack manifest file is similar to the one created for the resource pack, but it has two additional sections.

To learn more about how a manifest.json file works, see the the Addons Reference manifest.json documentation.

Enter UUIDs

Similar to the resource pack manifest file, you will need to generate two different UUIDs for the header and module sections of your manifest file. You can get UUIDs from an online generator such as https://www.uuidgenerator.net/.

Create the dependency

There is a third section in the behavior pack’s manifest.json file called ‘dependencies’ that is used to create a link between a resource pack and a behavior pack. This link is created when the UUID located in the header section of the resource pack’s manifest.json file is the same as the UUID in the dependencies section of the behavior pack’s manifest.json file. You do not need to have a resource pack to use a behavior pack, and you do not need to have a behavior pack to use a resource pack. If you do have both, you can use this solution to link them together so that when you load a behavior pack into a world, it automatically loads and activates the linked resource pack.

Create the Entities Folder and Add a Cow

Every entity’s behaviors are defined in its JSON file that lives inside the code that makes Minecraft work. You’re going to create a new cow behavior file that Minecraft will use instead of its usual «vanilla» one.

This is the entire edited cow.json file. It’s big because cows do a lot!

Testing the Pack

Now that the behavior pack has both a manifest file and a cow entity, it is time to launch Minecraft and test your new Add-On. As stated in the resource pack tutorial, Pack Stacking will work for behavior packs as well. This means that when content is loaded, vanilla content is loaded first, followed by any Add-Ons. Because all cows are controlled by the cow.json behavior file, all cows that spawn into your world will have the new behavior.

Troubleshooting

Behavior pack woes? Troubleshooting is a normal part of any development process. Here are some places to begin troubleshooting a behavior pack.

You can use the sample behavior pack on the Minecraft samples Github to check the structure of your behavior pack.

Behavior Pack Does Not Appear in Minecraft

If your resource pack does not appear in the Add-Ons section, something is wrong with the manifest.json file. Let’s start there.

Behavior Pack Shows Up, Content Doesn’t Work

What’s Next?

Now that you have seen a behavior pack in action, you can learn more about how they work and what else you can do with them.

To see examples of unchanged resource and behavior files, check out the Minecraft Vanilla resource pack and Vanilla behavior Pack.

Minecraft Forums

The All-Inclusive UPDATED Guide to Texturing

Poll: How much detail should I explain everything in?

Poll: Did this tutorial/guide help you?

If you are here, then you are here to either:
1) Learn about how to make a Texture/Resource Pack
2) Learn how the texturing system in Minecraft works
3) OR came from Steelfeathers’s old Texturing Guide page

This post will included an updated version of everything from Steelfeathers’s Guide, and will have more stuff too. It will include also everything that deals with the Texturing System that wasn’t in Steelfeathers’s Guide and more.
So basically, it’s an updated version

NOTE: This guide will (for the most part) be updated to the most RECENT version of Minecraft. It might include information about previous versions of Minecraft, but it might not be the correct way to create a pack in your selected version of Minecraft. If you need help in your version of Minecraft (that is after 1.5) then just ask for help.

Steelfeathers’s old guide is available by clicking the link below. It still works for Minecraft versions before 1.5.

Note: Do you see a problem with this guide or see incorrect information? PLEASE post it in the comment section, with an example on how I should change it, and I will change it.
Note: I do know some sections are missing, not complete, or not started. If you would like to help and contriubte then post in the comment section the section you want to edit and the information for that section, and I’ll add it.
Note: If you see this:
Need help with this section!
then it means I need help.
Any and all help will be appreciated for those following sections. Just post a comment saying which section(s) you want to help with and post the information. If it’s good and helpful, then I’ll add it.
Any and ALL feedback (good or bad) is appreciated!
‘Special Thanks’ and ‘Why I Decided to Update Steelfeathers’ Guide’

Welcome to the world of possibilities. Welcome to the world of Texturing /Resource Packs.

This guide is to serve as a quick reference that helps answer any and all questions you may have about texturing, from the simple mundane questions to the most complex questions ever. If you have any questions or have something that you want to add to this guide to make it more complete, please feel free to leave a comment.

Are you completely new to this world of possibilities, called Texture Packs or Resource Pack? Then the sections below will help explain to you everything about Texture/Resource Pack.

A texture pack is a zip file containing a series of special images that can be used by Minecraft to change the appearance of almost every aspect of the game, from blocks and water to weapons and mobs.

The core of a texture pack is a series of images in the folder /blocks. This folder has all the images that are the block’s texture. These images determines how the blocks that make up the majority of the Minecraft world look. Almost all texture packs you will find have edited the images in this folder. Some texture packs, however, only edit mobs or items, and are called ‘Mob packs’ and ‘Item packs,’ respectively.

A resource pack is, basically, the same as a texture pack. The only difference is that a resource pack has the ability to change more things in Minecraft. A resource pack can do the same thing a texture pack can do, but the resource pack can also change, add, and/or remove sounds, block models(for 1.8+), and item models(for 1.9+). It can also change existing languages or even add new languages into Minecraft.

Technically, resource pack have completely replaced texture packs ever since Minecraft version 1.5.

In this tutorial, resource packs and texture packs are referring to Resource Packs.

The possible things you can do in resource packs can be a lot of stuff. The stuff you can do in resource packs with MCPatcher, Optifine, and Shaders become also endless, if not infinite.

I’m ready to create a resource pack, but how does everything work? Well, in the world of Minecraft everything has this ‘old school’ look to it. Unlike most of today’s video games, Minecraft’s graphics are simplistic and pixelated. Let’s take a look at why that is:

Here is an example of a common Minecraft block texture. As you can see, this block is 16 pixels wide by 16 pixels high. This is what is referred to as 16x resolution. A texture pack where all the block textures are 16 pixels wide is called a 16x pack. Here’s what a 16x texture looks like at it’s normal size:

Pretty tiny, right? The default Minecraft textures are created from blocks with only 256 pixels each in order to reduce the amount of memory your computer needs to devote to running the game, allowing you to have nearly infinite worlds. With 16x textures, the game only has to render 256 pixels per block. This gives most operating systems a significant speed boost.

If, however, you are not a fan of the small space provided by 16x textures, it is possible to increase the size of the texture file in order to have more pixels per block to work with. Here is that same dirt block, only now its size has been increased by 200% so that it is 32 pixels wide instead of only 16 pixels wide:

This increase in block dimension allows you to put much more detail into your textures. Here is an example of a detailed 32x side dirt block, taken from Vattic’s Faithful pack.

Because of the wide-spread desire to bring more detail into Minecraft textures, there are many different HD resolution packs. The defining characteristic of all HD packs is that their blocks are more than 16 pixels wide. The most common HD resolutions are 32x (200%), 64x (400%), 128x (800%), 256x (1600%), and 512x (3200%). Although it is possible to have blocks that are 43 pixels wide or 15 pixels wide, there are many downsides to increasing or decreasing the size of a block to unusual resolutions, which will be touched on later.

The first hurdle all beginning texture pack makers have to overcome is actually finding the files they want to edit. For those new to the Minecraft world (or to computers in general) this may seem like a daunting task. But with the aid of a simple program and a few short steps, the process is actually ridiculously easy. Never fear! It will become routine in no time.

(2) Go into the ‘versions’ folder

(3) Go into the folder of the version you wish to edit (most recent is best)

(6) Create a folder in the’ resourcepacks’ folder, make a blank ‘assets’ folder, pack.png, and a blank pack.mcmeta (explained more here) file inside of this folder. If you’ve done it right, it will now show up in-game

(8) Continue mimicking the structure of the template you extracted until you have the location where you can edit the file. Copy over the file you wish to edit, and then edit it. You may also use the name for reference and make a new file instead (or, copy another file and give it that name). If you end up not changing a file, remember to delete it from your pack!

(9) If you’re in-game, using a pack folder, and make a file change, press F3+T to reload to see the change.

Are you done editing you texture pack and want to give out to the world for people and players to use?
Here is how you turn your folder into a zip file.

Warning: Only include files in your pack that you have changed. Including vanilla files is not only not needed (as the game will happily use vanilla assets), it adds bloat (definitely do not include vanilla files. ) and is a bad practice in 1.7+, as it breaks »pack stacking» ability, because assets won’t be missing in your pack to be filled in by other packs.
Warning 2: Also adding vanilla files breaks International Copyright laws. So best not to add anything that you did not make!

»I have an idea for a resource pack, but I have no idea how to make one!»

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there at one point or another. So take a deep breath, relax, and read over the following sections to see where to get started on your artistic journey, into the World of Possibilities.

We are going to go throught this folder by folder so lets start.

In the base of your new pack, we have 3 items: the pack.png, the pack.mcmeta, and the /assets folder.

The pack.mcmeta is the file that tells Minecraft »this is a resource pack.» The default pack.mcmeta is very cluttered, so it is advised you use this template when creating your texture pack.

Change the «description» line to change your pack’s description. The description is mapped onto two lines below your pack’s name. Each line cannot be more than 32 characters in length. Extra characters on the first line will overflow to the second line, however you can force a new line with the code «\n». Any text past 64 characters will not be used. As well, any quotation marks will need to be «escaped» by typing a backslash (\) before it.

The other lines in the default pack.mcmeta are for the many languages added in the game. *(outdated, kept for legacy support)*

You can include new languages by adding the appropriate lines to your pack.mcmeta.

(More explanation about the pack.mcmeta)

First we have the /assets folder which holds everything that deals with Textures inside it. Inside this folder there is a single folder, /minecraft. This is Minecraft’s «namespace». Most mods will have their own «namespace» folder that contains the mod’s resources, such as /nei for the NEI mod.

Next we have the /minecraft folder. In this folder we have all of Minecraft’s textures

After that we have a lot of folders. I’ll explain what each one does.

Third, we have the /models folder (Added in 1.8). This folder and the /blockstates folder are used to create the Block & Item models. More information about Custom Model can be found here.

The Sixth and last folder we have is the /textures folder. This folder holds all of the textures inside it.

Inside the /texture folder we have multiple folders. Each folder is detail below:

Inside the /blocks folder we have all the Block textures in Minecraft. Here is an explanation of what texture are what.

This folder contains all the textures for all the entities in Minecraft.

Here are links to the mobs texture layouts:
«Armor Stand Template» by kwerti
«Mob Skin Templates» by robothacker (some layouts MIGHT be outdated or not included)
«Guardian Texture Template» by Ringoster
«Rabbit Texture Template» by Meringue
«Endermite Texture Template» by ThePiDay (Also can be found here)
«Alex» by ThePiDay (Also can be found here)
«Chest Template» by Ajalexd (It’s for a 32×32 pack, but can be scaled to the resolution that you want it to be)

Mob Texture Layouts Coming Soon!

Inside this folder, has all the Item textures in Minecraft.

One of the questions frequently asked by new texture pack artists is, » Where is the oak fence/stair/wooden pressure plate texture, and how do I edit it?»

The answer to this question is two-fold:

First and foremost, there are no stand-alone textures for fences, stairs, half slabs, or pressure plates. These items are are made from derivative textures— they have no separate file all to themselves, but instead are made from the texture of another block.

Let’s use the texture for oak wooden planks as an example. As every Minecrafter knows, planks can be crafted into oak stairs, oak slabs, oak pressure plates, and oak fences. As shown in the image below, the oak plank texture found in the /blocks (‘/block’ in 1.13+) folder is recycled to make each of these items. They themselves do not have unique textures, but are rather pieced together from the oak plank texture, which is ‘wrapped’ around the model. Let’s take a look:

This principle also applies to cobble stairs/slabs, nether brick stairs/fences, and stone brick stairs/slabs, which take their textures from cobblestone, nether brick, and stone brick from their respective textures, respectively. Except for smooth stone slabs, every derivative item uses derivative textures. The image below shows this process for stone plates, buttons, and levers. As you can see from the image, the lever takes its base from the cobble used in its crafting recipe.

Although it is not possible to directly edit the textures on these items without changing the models, they can be indirectly edited by changing the texture from which they are made. To observe how the textures fold around the items, let’s first take the wooden plank and make a 2px wide line down it’s center:

With this red line serving as a guide, we are now able to observe exactly how the square textures are pieced together into complex 3D shapes:

From looking at the top image, it’s clear that the center post of the fence is made from a 4px wide vertical strip taken from the center of the texture (this is true for nether brick fences as well). This means that in order to have a clean vertical fence post, you would need to have a 4px wide vertical wood grain texture running down the center of the planks. From looking at B, you can also see that each step of the stairs is 8px high— in order to avoid having a joint between the planks land on or near the edge of the step, be sure to keep this 8px spacing in mind.

But fences and pressure plates are not the only items guilty of borrowing textures— many blocks in the /blocks folder also share textures with each other, and some even reuse parts of their own textures to fill in their 3D models.

First let’s take a look at an example of texture sharing between different blocks:

As you can see from the image above, the furnace side texture and the furnace top texture are shared between the lit furnace, unlit furnace, dropper, and dispenser. This can sometimes cause the furnace or dispenser to appear strange if careful planning is not done in advance to ensure that the side/top texture is not too dissimilar from the furnace/dispenser texture.

Another common question sometimes asked by first-time texture artists is, » Where do I find the texture for the side of the door?»

The answer to this is very similar to the one above for fences: the texture for the side of the door is found on the door itself. In the image below, you can see how the edge of the door appears to have hinges, an effect that is caused by a strip of the original texture being mapped onto the edge:

By drawing several multicolored lines on the edges of the door texture, we can map out exactly where this strip is taken from and how it is wrapped around the model of the door:

From this image you can see how a 16x by 3x wide rectangle is taken from the left side of the door and repeated end to end along the edge of the door. The opposite edge of the door is given the same treatment with the same strip of texture. Redstone repeaters, traps doors, and pistons also employ texture reuse to fill in ‘missing’ parts of their model.

Another block which reuses parts of its own texture is the piston. The arm of the piston takes its texture from the wooden part of the side texture, as shown in the image below.

For more information on which blocks share/reuse which textures, take a look at the section on texture wrapping.

Texture Wrapping is how the textures are put on the blocks.

(NOT FINISHED, Coming Soon)

» I’m ready to start making a texture pack, but how do I edit the textures?»

So you’re ready to make a texture pack, but you don’t know how to edit the images. Well luckily for you, we are here to help you.

There are a lot of programs that you can use to edit textures. Some popular ones are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, GIMP, and Paint.NET.

While Photoshop & Illustrator you have to pay to use, GIMP and Paint.NET are both free to use.

You could also use NovaSkin. It’s a browser based texture editing site, made to edit Minecraft’s textures and create a texture pack of all of your edited textures. NovaSkin has some of its bugs, so I recommend using NovaSkin to only help you determine to see how textures are placed on blocks or mobs, but don’t use NovaSkin to create textures. I recommend you use one of the editing programs listed above.

You could also try a free program named Krita. It is a painting software. «It can do painting+graphics+photo+vector work, it’s close to Photoshop feature wise and is actually a few steps above GIMP.» is what insomniac_lemon said on this thread here. Insomniac_lemon has made explained more about the program in the thread I just linked to.

The best program to use to help you edit textures is based on solely which program is easier for you to use. GIMP might be the best program for some people, while for others Paint.NET is better. It depends solely on you(the user), and how easy it is for you to use it.

Note: I personally prefer to use Photoshop and sometimes After Effects(which is a post-production video editor). I use Photoshop, because I have self-taught myself Photoshop and know how to use it. I also use After Effects because I use some of the plugins (both internal plugins and external 3rd party plugins) to create effects I can’t in Photoshop. But I also sometimes use GIMP for simple small things or edits.
Yes, you can use Adobe After Effects to create images. Just make a comp that’s one frame long, and when you’re done making the texture, just go to ‘Comp’ then ‘Save Frame As. ‘.

» Ok, I have everything to start making the textures. Any tips or tricks?»

This section will help you turn your ideas into textures. This is NOT a step-by-step instructions on how to make each different kind of block or achieve a certain ‘look’. Why? Because there are countless styles and techniques for making grass look like grass, and telling you to use one (or even a handful) would limit you from experimenting and finding new ways of making grass.

This section will, however, cover some of the basic artistic rules for shading, creating depth, choosing color, and using space (and pixels) effectively. It will also cover some of the issues specific to making texture art, such as the importance of tiling, and how to avoid the most common pitfalls.

(NOT FINISHED, Coming Soon)
Need help with this section!
From Alvoria:

Just choose where your light source is and then stick with it throughout the pack. I recommend above and a little to the left since that’s where people are conditioned (ironically by 2d NES/SNES-era games) to thinking light comes from in situations like this. Pretty much anywhere other than directly in front of the tile (pillow-shaded) or below (which will make the shading seem inverted to most people) will work though.

Try not to think of your lighting as a 3d in-world thing, but rather that each tile is lit individually from the same relative location. That’s how most packs do it. Remember: you’re always going to have something a little off because of the nature of Minecraft. Don’t fight this imperfection, but rather embrace it.

Or just build your pack around SEUS shaders and let the lighting engine do all the heavy lifting.

Now, that’s only the advice for blocks. For mobs, I recommend hanging the light right above their heads since that’s the usual direction they’ll be lit from anyway. and because it looks the best.

Items you can light however you want. Again, though, try to keep it somewhat consistent.

One of the biggest issues all texture artists face is the concept of tiling. ‘Tiling’ refers to the appearance of your block textures when viewed in a large grouping. For example, what your cobblestone texture looks like when part of a large castle wall.

Oftentimes textures that look good as single blocks create distracting patterns when placed together into groups, which makes them unsuitable for large projects. These ’tiling issues’ are notoriously hard to spot, and frequently even harder to get rid of. Luckily, there are a few tricks you can learn for how to anticipate tiling problems and eliminate them from your textures.

This type of error occurs when the lines or patterns in a texture (such as the cracks between cobblestones) do not match up from one side of the block to the other. Below is an example of a simple brick texture in which the lines between the bricks are drawn incorrectly and do not form whole bricks.

At first glance you might think that this is a pretty good base for a brick texture. But when the block is copied and pasted into a 2×2 square, a match-up error appears:

As you practice texturing you will learn to mentally trace the path of your patterns/cracks to make sure that everything connects where it should.

Always copy and paste your textures to check for tiling as you go along! Periodically tiling your textures as you work on them will save you a lot of trouble in the long run and help you to spot small tiling issues before they become big ones.

Pattern errors occur when slight variations in the color, shading, or size of a texture create unwanted patterns when the block is tiled over a large area. An example would be a dark spot on a block that looks like a face from a distance. Pattern errors are not quite as dramatic as match-up errors, but they will severely decrease the appeal of your pack depending on how annoying the pattern is (no one wants a bunch of faces in their castle wall, for instance).

Below is an example of a 16x cobblestone texture that has a pattern error.

At first glance this texture appears to be error-free. But once again, when the block is tiled a previously unseen pattern appears:

The cobblestone circled is far larger than the others, and thus stands out from the texture, creating a visible pattern.

Again, the best way to spot tiling errors is to copy and paste your textures into a square.

Very similar to the pattern error, a grid error is caused when bands of lighter/darker areas cut through the texture (typically along the edges) creating a grid when tiled.

When the texture is tiled, it become obvious that the strips of light and dark running through the texture form a grid. A method for fixing both pattern errors and grid errors are detailed below.

For blocks that do not have definite edges, use the following technique to isolate areas of bad tiling. NOTE: This method will not work for logs, cacti, or any texture where an edge of that texture must always be on the outside!

Tiling issues that occur at the corners or along the edges of the block tend to be very difficult to fix due to the fact that the edges have to mesh together. Below is a method for bringing those edge problems into the center of the block where they are much easier to get rid of.

First, divide the texture in half down the center and switch the two halves:

The result can be seen below. The two vertical edges have now been brought into the center.

Next, divide the texture in half again through the middle and switch the two halves:

And voila, the single large stone that caused the tiling problems demonstrated above is now in the center of the block where it can easily be broken into smaller stones.

For textures where the above method cannot be used, arrange copies of the target texture in the pattern shown to help simplify the editing process:

This arrangement allows you to see how all the edges connect, giving you the ability to modify the edges of the center texture to match the edges of the textures around it. Only edit two adjacent edges at once! If you try to do all four edges without re-copying the modified texture, you will be undoing all the corrections you made.

MinecraftForum user, loki_of_sassard has posted a video showing how to tile textures. In the video he is making a Cobblestone Variant texture. It’s part of a 3 part series. Forgive the 360p video quality & the bluriness. Video is here.

» What are some other texturing techniques I could use?»

There are tons of other techniques for texturing. The list of Texturing Techniques can be considered almost endless.

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There are few ways to create animated textures. In Minecraft you can animate all block and item textures.
Alvoria has made a GREAT tutorial on how to make animations in Minecraft. His tutorial page is here.

Minecraft has some special animated textures. These texture are animated textures that are either harder to make or act differently than other animated textures. These special animated textures are the water animations, lava animations, compass, and the clock. Again Alvoria’s Animation in Resource Packs page explains more about this and explains everything in detail too.

You can create a ‘.png.mcmeta’ file for any textures in Minecraft. While ‘.png.mcmeta’ files are required for all animated textures. It can also help be used with animations or with non-animated textures.

The ‘.png.mcmeta’ file can have 3 optional properties in it.

These 3 properties can be added to the ‘.png.mcmeta’ file to add special properties to the texture.
The ‘blur’ property will allow the texture to blur when viewed close-up.

You don’t need to have anyone of them to work. For example, if I want to blur a certain texture, I can have this in the texture’s ‘.png.mcmeta’ file and it will work.

» Let’s get to some of the advanced, weird, cool, and/or odd texturing ways of Minecraft!»

Some advanced topics are Style and Theme. There are a few more, but we won’t cover them(yet, maybe later on).
We will also cover some advanced stuff like Biome Shading, Clouds, Font, Rain and Snow, Enchantment Glint, and a few others.

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» How does the gray shaded textures turn into color?»

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Rain and snow in Minecraft might be a hard thing to do if you don’t know how it works, but it’s actually extremely simple once you understand it.

The two images above are used by Minecraft to determine the appearance of falling rain and snow. Both will be turned upside down in-game.

The rain will move quickly downwards, and will create water splash particles on top of every block exposed to the rain. The snow will move slowly downwards and slightly to the right.

Both snow.png and rain.png support semi-transparency, which means that you can create rain drops and snowflakes that are partially clear.

The images for rain and snow are repeated in a pattern and arranged as shown below around the player:

‘Font’, in the Minecraft world, refers to the appearance of all letters and numbers within the game, both in single-player and in multi-player. While the color of the font CAN be changed, it’s best if you didn’t change the color. Changing the color of the text to something besides white, does messed up colored text. It’s also possible to edit the basic shape of the font and even create HD fonts. When editing the font for a texture pack, it is advisable to increase the size of the font file (i.e. create an HD font) so that there is more pixel space available for smoother and/or more detailed letters.

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clouds.png is an image that modifies the appearance of the clouds seen within Minecraft. The pattern, color, and transparency can all be changed to achieve the effect you want. This means that you can have anything from smogy clouds to pink clouds (shown below).

If playing with your graphics mode set to ‘fancy’, the clouds will be blocky. If playing with your graphics mode set to ‘fast’, the clouds will be flat. You can even turn clouds off by making clouds.png totally transparent, or by having the ‘Clouds’ setting in the ‘Video Settings’ set to ‘Off’.

This is the file that alters the «enchanted glow» seen over top of enchanted weapons, tools, and armor. It is 64 by 64 pixels.

In game it is tilted 45 degrees in 2 directions and turns semitransparent and purple. It cycles over and over, in the shown direction:

The 1st direction it applies the enchantment glow is like this:

Then it applies the 2nd enchantment glow like this:

While this isn’t an Advanced Texturing Topic that is commonly used, it is a good idea and is a semi-advanced texturing idea.
MinecraftForum user, eleazzaar, made a page that talked about how some mods that have the same ore have different textures for the ore. So Eleazzaar talked about how he made all the ores in the 20 most popular mods use the same color scheme.

While it is a new topic, it is a good idea and may also be a good idea for other texture pack artist to do too.
Eleazzaar’s Universal Ore Color Scheme page is here. More information about it can be find there.

Color Vision Deficiency, or as some people refer to it as «Colorblindness», is commonly referring to some people’s inability to not see every color in the usual way. 99.5% of females & 92% of males have Trichromatic Color Vision, or normal human vision. Everyone else has a form of Color Vision Deficiency, meaning that they see some colors in a different way. The main reason why I have a section dedicated to Color Vision Deficiency is because it affects how your textures look to someone with a form of Color Vision Deficiency. Your textures might look good to someone with normal human vision, but it might not look good to someone without normal human vision.

MinecraftForum user Alvoria has created a Resource Pack that changes some of the shaders so that they mimic the effects of some forms of Colorblindness. That resource pack can be found here: Click Here

» Is there other ways to expand my resource pack?»

Yes, there is. There are TONS of ways to expand your texture pack. You can expand it adding texture changes for other mods, or add support to Optifine or MCPatcher features, or maybe have support for Shader mods.

We will cover how to add Mod Support to your texture pack, and how to use Optifine and MCPatcher features. We will also talk about Shaders too.

I will start off by saying, first hand, it might seem like Optifine has all the features of MCPatcher, but it DOESN’T have all the abilities and features of MCPatcher. Optifine is designed for reducing lag and mainly not texturing. It does include texturing options, but it’s not the same as MCPatcher’s features. MCPatcher is much better (texturing wise) than Optifine.

NOTE: Well Optifine has been updated more often than MCPatcher (MCPatcher is not being updated anymore). Optifine now has all the features (besides just a few) that MCPatcher has. Making this section about MCPatcher & Optifine pointless. I will create a guide about all the MCPatcher/Optifine features at a later date. (I just have been real busy). You can just skip to Shader Support for now.

You can talk about Optifine vs. MCPatcher here. Please don’t talk ‘Optifine vs. MCPatcher here. Your comments will be ignored.

We will start off by listing off all of MCPatcher’s features. MCPatcher currently have these features:
1)Extended HD
2)Random Mobs
3)Custom Colors
4)Connected Textures (aka CTM)
5)Better Glass
6)Better Skies
7)Custom Item Textures (aka CIT)
8)Better Grass (under Options tab)

Lets start off by saying what each one does.

Extended HD allows a Texture Pack Artist to:
1)Enable custom animations for other textures besides just blocks and items
2)Enable custom compass textures
3)Enable custom clock textures
4)Enable HD fonts
5)Use HD font siing for non-HD fonts

Random Mobs allows a Texture Pack Artist to:
1)Enable mobs to use a random set of textures
2)Enable mobs to use a random set of textures based off a certain conditions

Custom Colors allows a Texture Pack Artist to:
1)Customize the colors of Water
2)Customize the colors of Swamp grass and foliage
3)Customize the colors of Pine(Spruce) and brich trees
4)Customize the colors of Potions
5)Customize the colors of Particle Effects
6)Customize the colors of Lighting
7)Customize the colors of Cloud type
8)Customize the colors of Redstone wiring and particle effects
9)Customize the colors of Pumpkin and melon stems
10)Customize the colors of Creative Mode spawn eggs
11)Customize the colors of Held maps
12)Customize the colors of Sheep and dyes
13)Customize the colors of Text
14)Customize the colors of XP Orbs
15)Customize the colors of Fog and sky
16)Customize the colors of other blocks that don’t use Biome shading
17)Enable Smooth Biome colors

Connected Texture allows a Texture Pack Artist to:
1)Apply replacement textures to Standard blocks
2)Apply replacement textures to Non-Standard blocks
3)Apply replacement textures to Glass Panes
4)Enable Better Grass

Better Glass allows a Texture Pack Artist to:
1)Adds 2 new render passes for blocks
2)Adds full alpha channel support to glass blocks and panes

Better Skies allows a Texture Pack Artist to:
1)Fully customizable skyboxes
2)Brighten fireworks particles

Custom Item Textures allows a Texture Pack Artist to:
1)Customize item appearance by damage value, stack size, and NBT data (Basically, it’s CTM but for items in a way)
2)Customize item enchantments appearance by damage value, stack size, and NBT data
3)Customize worn armor appearance by damage value, stack size, and NBT data

Now that we have said what each feature does, we can now explain how they work, and how you add them into your pack.

If you want to make a Custom Lightmap using MCPatcher, Alvoria has made an amazing tutorial on how to make Custom Lightmaps. His tutorial is here.

MinecraftForum user, Deonyi, made a great guide that explains everything about CTM & Connected Textures. His guide is here.

(To start learning about MCPatcher’s features, you can check out the information in the Original Post (OP) of the MCPatcher thread which is here. It’s listed under the » Information for Texture Pack Authors » section.)

The only feature that Optifine has that MCPatcher doesn’t is that Optifine has «Natural Textures». Natural Textures removes the gridlike pattern created by repeating blocks of the same type. Uses rotated and flipped variants of the base block texture.

While this can be recreated in MCPatcher real easily, all you have to do for this is copy a template and edit the template.

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For your texture pack to support shaders, you don’t have to do anything actually. But if you want to use Normal maps, Spectular maps, and/or Parallax maps, you need to do some special stuff.

Section 5.3, shader texture maps section:

for the resource pack to support shaders, you need to add specular maps and/or normal maps.

Normal maps are textures that has the same shape as the original textures, but with custom colours that the shaders can detect to add depth to the face of the texture. To generate normal maps, you can download a photoshop plugin «nVidia texture tools» here for free if you use photoshop, or you can use the paid version (trial version available) of «crazybump». Another choice is to use the online normal map generator here. After generating the normal map, add «_n» to the texture name (without quotes), so for example «grass_top.png» has a normal map of «grass_top_n.png».

Specular maps are textures that also has the same texture like the original textures, but with a desaturated colours (black and white), with white representing more light getting bounced. Generating specular maps are a bit more difficult because it completely depends on the material, e.g. iron blocks reflect light more, while coal blocks reflect less. The best way to start is to desaturate the generated normal map texture, and then tweaking it to your liking. For the specular maps, name the files with a suffix «_s», so for «dirt.png», it will be «dirt_s.png» (without quotes)

Normal and specular maps don’t typically look as good if not used on a HD texture pack, preferably 64x or more.

What to change the texture in your favorite mod? Well here is how you do it.

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There are some more features that Resource Packs can have that can help improve your Resource Pack. These feature range from something small to very large features.

You can create custom languages for you texture pack. This feature can be use to rename a few things or can be used to rename everything!
Does your Emeralds use a Ruby texture, but they still stay ‘Emerald’ and you want to change it? Just create a custom language and change the default Emerald item name to Ruby, and then all your Emerald are now called Ruby.

The top is just a small example for what you can use a Custom Language for.

» How do I start to make a Custom Language?»

Well to start you need to have the following in your pack.mcmeta:

Lang_Country is the file name in your Resource Pack. (Example: en_EX can be used for example.)
YourLanguageName is the name of the Language that will appear in the Language Selection Screen.
LanguageRegion is the Country/Region where your Language is mainly located.

Lang_Country is used so that Minecraft can tell what the Language file is named. So if you named the language file ‘Test.lang’ then you will replace ‘Lang_Country’ with ‘Test’
YourLanguageName and LanguageRegion are used for the Language Selection Screen.

Here is an example:

The file in the /assets/minecraft/lang folder will be called ‘Example.lang’, and in the Language Selection Screen it will look like this ‘Test (Worldwide)’.

Edit the lines that you want to edit. Edit everything pass the equal sign (=).
For example, if you want to rename Emerald to Ruby, you need to find the line that has the Emerald item name.

Then change the Emerald to Ruby:

NOTE: Don’t change what is before the equal sign. If you change what’s before the equal sign then Minecraft won’t recongize the line.

The pack.mcmeta is a CRUCIAL part of your texture pack. With out that (and your pack.png) then Minecraft won’t recognize your Resource Pack.

To create a pack.mcmeta for your texture pack, you can get the default one that’s used by Minecraft. To find the default Minecraft one, follow these instructions:

(1)
Go to your ‘.minecraft’ folder

(2)
Go to the ‘assets’ folder

(3)
Go to the ‘virtual’ folder, then the ‘legacy’ folder

(4)
The pack.mcmeta is here.
* (outdated, kept here for legacy support)*

Updated version:
1) In the base folder of your resource pack make a text file called ‘pack.mcmeta’ but make sure the file does not in ‘.txt’ but instead ends in ‘.mcmeta’. This is because Minecraft will NOT read any ‘.txt’ files but only ‘.mcmeta’ files. You have to MANUALLY make this file as it is not found anywhere in the Minecraft files.

You copy that to the base of your pack (where the /assets folder is and the pack.png too), then open it up with any text opener (Notepad or Notepad++ work just fine). You will see a lot languages in this pack.mcmeta. Just delete those languages. *(outdated, kept here for legacy support)*

For the pack.mcmeta to work, you just need to have at least this:

If you want to have the description of your pack to have color, then you will need to some special Unicode magic, (not really magic).
Lets say, for the sake of example, you want your pack’s description to look like this: This text is RED.
To make it look like that you need to do this:

This works because the ‘\u00A7’ is Unicode for the Section Sign (§). The section sign is used in Minecraft to help make fonts change colors and add certain formatting options (like bold text).
More on the Formatting and Color codes are listed here.

You can also add custom languages with the pack.mcmeta, more info on that is here.

You can also customize the 3D block models of every block.

MinecraftForum user, insomniac_lemon, made a page that talks about how to do Custom Block Models and even has examples too.
His page is here.
MinecraftForum user, XSSheep, made a page that talks about how to do Alternate Textures & Custom Models.
His page is here.

MinecraftForum user, opl, has made his own program that helps with lots of thing from block models to item models. His page can be found here.

Since Mincraft version 1.7.2, there have been shaders that have been added to Vanilla Minecraft. You can access the shaders by clicking on the «Super Secret Settings» button that’s in the Options menu. Clicking the button will cycle through all the available built-in shaders in Minecraft. This will only work if you PC has OpenGL 2.1 or higher. If at any point you want to turn off the shaders, just press F4. You can go to the Minecraft Wiki to view a whole list of possible shaders.

The Minecraft shaders can be acessed by pressing F4 to cycle between them

The reason that this is in this Guide is because you can edit these shaders from your Resource Pack. MinecraftForum user, grar has made a guide that explains all about the Vanilla Shaders & how to edit them. His page can be found here.

Whenever you have finished creating your pack & you want other people to see it/want to release it to the public. There are a few things that you can do to help get people to download it. For the sack of this Guide, I will only tell you how to do this for the MinecraftForums, as I prefer that this is the best site to download texture packs from.

There are a few things you have to understand about posting your pack here. There a Pinned Thread that is called «A word about texturepacks» which is by MinecraftForum user 42and19. It talks all about the Myths & Facts that people have about Resource/Texture Packs.
There are some more ideas/tips for creating a good Page for your pack.
Here are some:

There are a lot more ideas/tips that other Texture Pack artist can give you too.

There are some tips you can do for other people to stop stealing your ideas. Here is one of them: MinecraftForum user Ringoster made a page that talks briefly about Piracy of packs from site to site, & some tips to help other people know that it’s stolen. Here is that page: Click here.
(More Updates Coming Soon. )