Ready to start texturing? Let's get down to it! If you haven't already, make sure you've read through and completed the previous guide on how to create your first model. In this guide, though, we'll go deeper into the field of texturing and how palettes and style can affect your model. Let's get down to it!
But... what is texturing and why is it so important?
As teased in the previous guide, texturing is the process of "painting" your elements and giving them artifical shades. To put it in not-so-nerdy words, texturing is the process of making your model look "alive". Let me explain; out of the following pictures, which of these models looks best to you?
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Most people will vote for the one on the right, but why? In many games, models don’t rely on texture-shading because the engine uses advanced lighting and shaders to handle that dynamically. The lighting is applied directly to the model in real time, so the textures themselves can stay relatively flat.
However, vanilla Minecraft doesn’t have built-in shading. Because of that, when you’re modeling for Minecraft, the shading has to be done directly in the texture. Proper texturing is essential if you want your model to blend naturally with the rest of the game’s style. Additionally, Minecraft's style uses a very limited amount of elements (i.e. cubes) for its items and blocks. Because the geometry itself is so simple, the textures do most of the heavy lifting. This is why shading is so important when making models; without it, your model will look awkward and out of place.
Texturing: common mistakes
One of the biggest challenges people face when modelling is creating their colour palettes. In fact, many beginners actually get the shading style right, but their palette ends up feeling too dull, saturated, or simply out of place compared to Minecraft's visual style.
To learn more about how to select the right values for your model, let's take the tennis ball we made in the previous guide and show some of the common mistakes that beginners make when texturing:
Common Mistakes | Example Reference |
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Common Mistake 1.- Soft Shading When shading, beginners often hesitate to push saturation or contrast too far. To play it safe, they'll move their cursor just slightly toward a lighter or darker value in the color picker.As a result, the difference in shading is so subtle that the model ends up looking flat, and you often have to squint just to notice that any shading was applied at all. Solution: When choosing lighter or darker tones, make sure the shift is clearly visible on the model. In models that rely on pixel art, these changes are meant to be seen. Don’t be afraid to push the contrast far enough! | 
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Common Mistake 2.- Pillow Shading Another common mistake is to make the contrasting shade values too close together, to the point where the model just looks murky or dirty.While pillow shading definitely has its place in some models (e.g.- rice textures, rocky/dirt patterns, etc.), most of them will require you to follow a more minimalistic method of shading. Solution: When shading, avoid having more than two different shade values directly touching each other in the same area. If three or more shades meet at a single point or along a small cluster of pixels, the surface can start to look noisy and messy. Instead, keep your shading structured and readable. Let one value transition clearly into the next (light to midtone; midtone to shadow; ...) without stacking multiple shades in the same spot. | 
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Common Mistake 3.- Washed-out palette Similarly to soft shading, beginners tend to choose colours that are washed away or look "dead". Remember, shading is meant to make your model look alive.While it's acceptable to use less saturated colours in certain situations, it is often preferred to use saturated values to make the model fit the context of Minecraft. Solution: When choosing your colors, make sure your picker is positioned closer to the right side of the color map so it maintains a fair level of saturation depending on the context. | 
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Common Mistake 4.- No hue-shifting Though we'll go over hue shifting later in this guide, it’s very common to see beginners skip it entirely in their first models. When selecting a darker or lighter shade, they usually just move the color picker straight up or down, changing only the brightness level, without adjusting the saturation or contrast at all.Solution: When picking brighter or darker values, make sure to move your picker to the left or right, depending on the overall style you're looking for. We'll go over hue shifting later in this document, so don't worry too much for now. | 
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How do I create my texture?
Now that you know the dont's of texturing, let's get to the actual process of texturing on Blockbench! As described in the previous guide, texturing should always come after figuring out your model's geometry. As a matter of fact, modellers will usually ask their customer whether a specific shape is good before they start texturing.
As described in the previous guide, you'll be able to create your model's texture by clicking on the Create Texture button on the left side of your screen. This will pop up a menu with a bunch of options; these are the most important ones:
- Type. Blockbench has multiple ways of generating your model's texture. For beginners, we recommend using the "Texture Template" option, as it automatically sets up your texture map and automatically generates a colored texture that you can just paint over.
- Pixel Density. This will determine how "detailed" your model will be. Usually, you'll be using a 16x16 density unless you're making a model that's really big or requires a higher resolution, depending on what you're making.
Texturing Tool | Visual Reference |
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| Paint Mode/Brush (Key: B) This will switch to Paint Mode while equipping the default brush tool. You can find this button on the top right corner of your screen. | 
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| Paint Bucket (Key: N/A) This will switch to the Bucket Tool, filling in all connected pixels with the selected colour. While you have this tool selected, a dropdown will appear with multiple options, depending on what you want your bucket tool to do:
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| Eraser (Key: E) This tool will delete a specific pixel and turn it into a fully transparent one. It is quite useful when correcting mistakes or creating textures with transparent backgrounds, especially when creating flat elements. | 
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| Color Picker (Key: Alt) This tool lets you sample a specific color from your model or UV map. It's recommended to hold Alt while clicking on the model to instantly switch to the picked color. | 
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| Draw Shape (Key: U) This tool helps you create squares and circles when texturing your models. This is specially useful when using the "Erase Mode" to delete large chunks of your texture (more on that later). | 
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| Selection Tool (Key: M) This tool lets you select parts of your UV map so you can later modify or delete them. As indicated by the icon, clicking the arrow next to it will give you the following selection options:
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| Size Bar (Brush Option) This bar lets you adjust the size of your brush. However, it's recommended to work with a 1px. brush whenever possible to ensure your shading is as precise and polished as possible. | 
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| Opacity Bar (Brush/Bucket Option) This bar lets you adjust the opacity of your tool, which can help when subtly modifying color values. However, use it carefully while texturing. Many beginners make the mistake of overusing it, creating too many intermediate shades, a practice that often leads to pillow shading. | 
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| Mirror tool This tool allows you to mirror your painting, making it easy to create symmetrical shapes within the selected area. Just make sure you're working on the correct axis to get the intended symmetry. | 
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| Lock Alpha Channel This tool prevents you from painting over transparent pixels. When enabled, you can only modify pixels that already have color, which is useful for shading or recoloring without affecting transparency. | 
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Creating your palette: saturation & hue shifting
You now know most of the basic tools you'll need to texture! But hey, let's not forget that there are some guidelines you should follow to keep your models as vanilla-friendly as possible.
Firstly, you'll want to pick (a) base color(s) for your texture. Make sure these colours are reasonably saturated to avoid having a washed-out texture. Now, when selecting brighter or darker values, try to use this rule of thumb:
- Brighter tones usually benefit from higher saturation. As you move up in the color map, slide the selector slightly to the right.
- Darker tones typically have lower saturation. As you move down in the color map, shift the selector toward the left.
- Red:
- Darker tones -> shift towards magenta/purple
- Brighter tones -> shift towards orange
- Yellow:
- Darker tones -> shift towards orange/red
- Brighter tones -> shift towards green
- Green:
- Darker tones -> shift towards blue
- Brighter tones -> shift towards yellow
- Blue:
- Darker tones -> shift towards purple
- Brighter tones -> shift towards aqua/green
- Purple:
- Darker tones -> shift towards blue
- Brighter tones -> shift towards magenta
If you're shading with black or white, it is recommended that you pick either yellow/orange or blue as your base color, depending on the texture and feel you want your model to have.
That's a lot to take in! If you're having trouble picking the right values, a good starting point is to use pre-made palettes from online resources to shade your models. Once you feel more confident, you can start applying the guidelines we've covered above to create your own palette.
Shade shaping
Now that you have your palette ready and you know all the tools and steps to generate and modify your texture, let's actually get to shading! This time, you'll be given a model (tea cup) to start texturing. Click here to download it!
Now that you have your palette ready and you know all the tools and steps to generate and modify your texture, let's actually get to shading! This time, you'll be given a model (tea cup) to start texturing. Click here to download it!
Step Description | Visual Showcase |
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1. Generate your texture Once you open up the blockbench file, you'll see the untextured tea cup. To generate the texture, click on Create Texture > Texture Template | |
2. Create palette for mug colour Now, let's get the colours for the mug! I will be using a gray colour, but you use your own (white, black, brown, etc.)! As explained in the the palette section, we will be using less saturated tones for the darker shades, and more saturated tones for the brighter ones. | The process of creating this palette is showcased in the next videos. Nonetheless, here are the colors I used:
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3. Shape up the shading As seen in the video, the shading style tends to follow a u-shaped pattern, which goes brighter the higher it gets. While following the video instructions, ensure that you avoid all of the common mistakes described at the beginning of this guide! | |
4. Copy the texture faces Once you have finished texturing one of the faces, you can actually recycle it by following these steps:
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5. Rinse and repeat! Great! Now, repeat the same steps for the top part of the mug and the actual tea liquid. Since the tea actually doesn't take up that much space, don't worry too much about the texture shape; a simple square of darker shades closer to the rim of the cup should be enough. |
You've reached the end!
Hooray! You now have all it takes to properly texture your own models! Remember, texturing is a very unique skill that takes time to perfect and consolidate. While it is true that Minecraft has specific guidelines for texturing, your palette or shading style may have slight variations, and that's okay! What matters is that your texture is pleasing to look at and fits the Minecraft environment. That said, once you're ready, have a look at the next guide!
- Creating your first model!
- Texturing Style & Palettes [You are here!]
- Displaying your model! [WIP]
- Model geometry & flat textures [WIP]
As always, feel free to share your creations in the reply section of this thread!
