Minecraft Texture

Texture

Textures compose almost every visible element of the game. Java Edition only.

Directory Structure

Under assets/<namespace>/textures/: colormap/ (biome color maps), effect/ (post-processing input textures), entity/ (entity and dynamic-model block textures), environment/ (clouds, rain, End sky), font/, gui/ (+ gui/sprites/), item/, map/, misc/ (glint, spyglass overlay...), mob_effect/, painting/, particle/, trims/ (color_palettes/, entity/, items/).

Texture Properties

Textures are either independent (loaded alone: title texture, misc/ files) or sprites (merged into atlases); and either static or animated (frames uploaded repeatedly). Independent textures can set properties via *.png.mcmeta:

• texture.blur (default false) — nearest-neighbor vs (bi)linear filtering.
• texture.clamp (default false) — repeat the texture vs clamp/stretch the edges outside UV range.
• texture.mipmap_strategy (default auto) — mean (average 2×2 groups; vanilla solid/translucent blocks), dark_cutout (like mean but darkens cutout pixels; mangrove roots), cutout (generated from the original texture), strict_cutout (stricter alpha cutoff, invisible at high mip levels; flowers), auto (mean for fully-transparent pixels, cutout otherwise).
• texture.alpha_cutoff_bias (default 0) — cutoff alpha bias for distant cutout textures (lower mip levels only).
• texture.palette.base_palette — base palette texture ID for armor trims.

Sprites cannot set their own properties (the atlas handles filtering; nearest-neighbor). Texture size: for block/item textures non-square sizes can render unexpectedly; sprite sizes also limit atlas mipmaps (not divisible by 2 → no mipmaps; divisible by 2 but not 4 → max mip level 1, etc.).

Texture Atlases

See the atlas skill. F3+S dumps atlases + sprite mapping; atlases are referenced as minecraft:atlas/<id>. Atlas-loaded textures can be animated (GUI atlas also supports GUI properties).

Animated Textures

Animated textures must be sprites (independent textures can never animate, even with metadata). Frames are laid out in a grid; frame 0 = top-left, numbering left-to-right then next row. Frame dimensions must be equal and the whole image a multiple of them (else the texture is replaced with the missing texture).

Metadata (*.png.mcmeta, e.g. stone.png.mcmeta):

• animation.height (>0) / animation.width (>0) — frame size in pixels (one unspecified → full other dimension; both unspecified → square with the smaller side; larger than the texture → static; −1 = unset).
• animation.frames — playback order list (absent/empty = natural order): each entry an int frame index (out of range → skipped) or {index (≥0), time (>0, overrides frametime)}.
• animation.frametime (>0, default 1) — ticks per frame.
• animation.interpolate (default false) — blend between adjacent frames.

Animated-eligible categories (vanilla): block/item textures, banner/shield textures, some block entities (beds, chests, conduit, decorated pot, enchantment book, bell, shulker boxes, signs), item frames and paintings, GUI sprites + mob effect icons, map icons, particles, armor trims (but vanilla's paletted_permutations source doesn't support animation), celestial bodies (sun, moon, End flash).

Special Textures

• Missing texture (minecraft:missingno) — auto-generated, added to all atlases; 16×16; purple #F800F8 bottom-left/top-right, black top-left/bottom-right. Used when a texture or its metadata fails to load.
• Loading screen logo — assets/minecraft/gui/title/mojangstudios.png; only loaded from the game JAR (not resource-pack-replaceable).
• Color maps — colormap/grass.png, colormap/foliage.png (note the wiki's "foilage" typo), colormap/dry_foliage.png; 256×256, independent, no metadata. Out-of-range indices use #FF00FF / #48B518 / #B269D2 when the texture has fewer than 65536 pixels.

GUI Sprite Textures

textures/gui/sprites/ — all sprites; extra metadata in *.png.mcmeta:

• gui.scaling.type:
  • nine_slice — 9-slice scaling: border (int shorthand) or left/top/right/bottom (≥0), width/height (>0; texture stretches to these then slices), stretch_inner (default false — stretch instead of tiling the center).
  • stretch — stretch to fit.
  • tile — tile the texture: width/height (>0 per tile; texture stretches to the tile size first).

Villager Textures

Villagers (incl. zombie villagers) combine biome clothing, profession clothing, and profession badge textures. The hat layers of biome/profession clothing can conflict, so both need metadata:

• villager.hat — none, partial, or full (default none).

The biome clothing hat renders only when the profession hat is none, or partial while the biome hat is not full; otherwise it is hidden.