Introduction to Resource Packs

  • 5 minutes to read

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 resource pack is a folder structure that will contain all of your custom models, sounds, textures and other custom content.

Image showing a pig deeply confused by its environment containing green dirt blocks

In this tutorial, you will learn the following:

  • How a resource pack is created.
  • How a manifest file is created.
  • How custom textures are loaded into Minecraft.
  • The concept of Pack Stacking when working with Add-On content.

Requirements

It's recommended that the following be completed before beginning this tutorial:

  • Getting Started with Add-On Development

You will also need the following:

  • Download the Vanilla resource pack

Building the Resource Pack

The first part of creating a resource pack is to create the folder that will hold your custom content. It will need to be placed in a location where Minecraft can find it so your changes can be loaded into the game.

  1. Open your com.mojang folder.
  2. Double-click the development_resource_packs folder to open it.
  3. Add a new folder and name it My_RESOURCE_Pack.
  4. Double-click the *My_RESOURCE_Pack folder to open it. image of newly created folder with a single Folder called My_RESOURCE_Pack located in the development resource packs folder

Creating a Manifest File

To load a resource pack into Minecraft, a manifest file will need to be created. The manifest file is a JSON file that contains the following information:

  • Description: In-game description of what the resource pack does.
  • Name: In-game name of the resource pack.
  • UUID: Universally Unique Identifier.
  • Version: Version of the resource pack.
  • Minimum Engine Version: Required version of Minecraft that this pack will work in.

Minecraft will parse the information from the manifest file and display it in the Add-On section of the game. Inside the file, the information will be split into two separate sections: header and modules. The header section will contain the overall information for the pack, and the modules section will contain the dedicated packages information.

  1. Right-click in the Explorer window, select New > Text Document.
  2. Name it manifest.json.
    1. You will need to change the file extension from .txt to .json. If your Explorer window does not show file extensions, you can enable File Name Extensions under the View tab. image of newly created file named manifest.json file located within the My_RESOURCE_Pack folder
  3. Double-click the manifest.json file to open it in a text editor.
  4. Copy and paste the following code into your file.
                          { 	  "format_version": 2, 	  "header": {       "description": "My first resource pack Add-On!", 	    "name": "My Resource Pack", 	    "uuid":"", 	    "version": [1, 0, 0], 	    "min_engine_version": [1, 16, 0] 	  }, 	  "modules": [ 	    { 	      "description": "My First Add-On!", 	      "type": "resources", 	      "uuid": "", 	      "version": [1, 0, 0] 	    } 	  ] 	}

UUID

Universally Unique Identifier, or UUID for short, is a unique number used to identify different software. For Minecraft, the UUID is used to define a specific pack and to prevent any duplicate software from causing issues. For the header and modules, there will need to be two different UUID numbers entered in each of the "uuid" fields between the quotes. You can get UUIDs from an online UUID Generator such as https://www.uuidgenerator.net/.

Image of UUIDGenerator.net home screen with a custom UUID generated

  1. Copy and paste a UUID into the header section. The UUID will need to be pasted in the "uuid":"" field between the quotation ("") marks in order to be read correctly.
  2. Refresh the webpage to generate a new UUID for use in the Modules section.
  3. Copy and paste the new UUID into the modules section in the "uuid" field between the quotation marks.
  4. Save the manifest.json file.

Note

To learn more about how a manifest.json file works, you can click this link to see the page in the Addons documentation: manifest.json.

Changing the dirt block

With the manifest file completed, you can now start adding custom content to Minecraft. Let's get started by applying a new texture to the vanilla dirt block. The first part of the process involves creating a folder structure to hold the texture.

  1. In File Explorer, in the My_RESOURCE_Pack folder, create a folder and name it textures.
  2. Double-click the textures folder to open it.
  3. Inside the textures folder, create a folder and name it blocks.
  4. Double-click the blocks folder to open it. image of the Windows Explorer Address Bar showcasing the 2 new folders named textures and blocks

Creating the texture

Now that the folder structure is created, you can place your custom textures there. This little, green square is an example of the type of file created by the following steps.

A PNG file that can be downloaded and used in place of a custom texture made in a photo editor

You can download it and save it in your blocks folder or follow these steps to create your own texture:

  1. Open up an image editor such as MS Paint.
  2. Go to the File menu and select Properties.
  3. Set the Width and Height to 16 pixels each.
  4. Click OK.

You can now design a pattern or any artwork in the editor. To make the green square, a simple fill color was added.

Note

MS Paint is used in this example for quick and easy access, but you will need to use a different graphics editor for more advanced graphic features like transparency effects or .tga file support.

  1. When you're done editing your texture, go to the File menu and select Save As.
  2. Chose the PNG picture option.
  3. In the Save As dialog box, navigate to the blocks folder you created.
  4. Save the file as dirt.png.

Testing the pack

Now that the pack has both a manifest file and a texture, you can launch Minecraft and test your new resource Add-On.

Important

Pack Stacking is how content is loaded on top of vanilla content, causing each object that has the same name in both packs to be overwritten by the latest applied pack. In our example, the original dirt texture is overwritten by our custom texture.

If another pack that uses the dirt.png file is loaded after My_RESOURCE_Pack, then Minecraft will use that one instead and you won't see that change.

Your custom texture will be used on every dirt.png block in the world, but it will not be used on blocks of dirt with grass on them because those block have a different name.

  1. Launch Minecraft and select Play.
  2. Select Create New World.
  3. Under Settings, scroll down to the Add-Ons section.
  4. Click on Resource Packs to see all available packs.
  5. Click the MY PACKS drop-down to open it.
  6. Select My RESOURCE Pack and click Activate to add the resource pack to the world.
  7. Click Create to create your world. Image of Minecraft's Settings page with the Add-On menu selected for resource packs. There is a red rectangle outlining My Resource Pack and the Activate button.

What's Next?

With a custom texture now a part of your Minecraft world, it's time to look at behavior packs and how you can alter existing entity behaviors. In the next section, you will learn how to add an aggressive behavior to a normally peaceful cow entity.