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Bedrock Modeling Introduction 

Table of contents
  1. Bedrock Modeling Introduction
    1. Texture Glitch
    2. Vertex Snap
    3. Transparency
    4. Texturing
    5. Materials
    6. Z fighting
    7. Basics of Animations

This will be a guide with tips, tricks, and things you should know when modeling for Minecraft Bedrock Edition.

Texture Glitch

Sometimes the texture on some (smaller) faces are glitched or invisible. This is because size of cubes is floored for the UV map calculation. This means that any size smaller than 1 will result in a 0 pixel wide UV map, which will look glitchy. To prevent this make sure all of your cubes are at least 1 unit long in each direction. To create smaller cubes, use the Inflate slider. Another trick to solve this if you must have smaller textures, is by increasing the element size by 1 in each direction and then inflating the element by -1 though note that this will make you have smaller pixels, and if textured incorrectly will lead to mixels.

Vertex Snap

Vertex snap is a very useful tool in blockbench any modeler should use. It’s specially useful when doing rounded things like wheels. You can find this tool right top next to the movement & scale tools. It has 2 modes, Move & Scale. How this tool works can be seen in the following gif. Vertex Snap Gif

Transparency

If you use semi-transparent textures (like colored glass) you need to move elements with that texture to the bottom of the element list. Otherwise elements behind these semi-transparent ones won’t render ingame.

Texturing

When learning to texture your best bet is practicing with references on how others textured similar objects & surfaces. Patterns for wood & metal are different and you should take that into consideration. Good guides are Masteriano’s Texturing Tips And in general any on pixel art.

Materials

Whether or no the transparency or emissive textures in your models work in-game, it’s decided by the materials applied to it.

Material Description
entity basic opaque material
entity_alphatest supports transparent pixels
entity_alphablend supports translucent pixeks
entity_emissive solid, alpha channel is used as the emissive channel
entity_emissive_alpha alpha channel is used for emissiveness, completely black + transparent pixels are rendered transparently

Z fighting

Z fighting is called when you have the face of 2 elements in the same place and you can see both or half of them at the same time, like seen in the following picture. Example You can solve this by inflating one of them by 0.01 or -0.01 depending which one should have priority.

Basics of Animations

When animating in Blockbench, you can set each keyframe by hand, or you can use variables & functions. Here you will learn the basics. Lets start with this picture Example the name, or animation.cuack is very important. You can’t have symbols or caps there, and it must start with animation. for the animations to work without problems. Now the function we will be using it Base + Math.sin((query.life_time + Offset) * Speed) * pitch

  • Base is the starting rotation/position the bone has
  • Sin is the math function we all know
  • query.life_time is a variable. Is a number that will be increasing as the animation continues
  • Offset is a number we use to have the animation to start earlier or later than it’s “original” position
  • Speed is the time it will take from going from top to down
  • Pitch is how far it goes from the origin

The movement this equation creates can be seen in the following gif Movement

Function used: Math.sin((query.life_time+0.5)*150)*15 one on position & the other on rotation.

NOTE: Graph the equation on an online graphicator to better understand what’s going on

Don’t forget that for the animation to be a perfect loop, you need to correlate the sin equation speed & the animation time. (seen on the first picture under Animation Basics) Here’s a table with values to get a perfect loop, though there are more you can discover.

Speed Time Group
150 2.4 1
100 3.6 2

These numbers can be multiplied but not divided, so these will also work But only multiples of the same option

Speed Time Group
150 4.8 1
200 3.6 2
300 2.4 1
300 3.6 1 & 2

Now not all of these will “loop” together. And that is the Group column. The ones with the same number will work together, otherwhise they will have a visible “glitch” in the loop.

NOTE: you can have an animation in loop clicking on the following setting Setting Image

Is with this function & creativity that animals & dinosaurs are animated into walking, running & attacking. You can learn more about queries & functions at the following link: https://bedrock.dev/docs/stable/MoLang