06. Minecraft Bedrock Edition

MiEx let's you load in Minecraft Bedrock Edition worlds and resource packs to be able to export out those worlds into animation software. It supports the official launcher installed on Windows. MiEx will automatically find all worlds available in the launcher.

Internally, MiEx represents worlds and resource packs in a format more similar to Minecraft Java Edition. When loading in Bedrock Edition worlds, it effectively converts it into this representation as it reads the chunks in. Minecraft Bedrock Edition also has certain blocks and block properties named differently from Java Edition. MiEx comes with some translation files to map these blocks into the Java Edition names so that both Java Edition and Bedrock Edition resource packs can be used interchangeably for both Java Edition and Bedrock Edition worlds.

Addons

MiEx supports loading in worlds that make use of addons. When you open up a Bedrock Edition world that makes use of addons, it will ask you if you want to enable the resource packs that contain the information on how to export out the blocks from these addons. If MiEx can't find these resource packs (because they haven't been installed yet), then it'll give you a popup that you can use to have MiEx automatically extract the data needed from the addons and install them into a resource pack in MiEx.

Marketplace Maps, Addons, and Resource Packs

Items bought from the Minecraft Marketplace are encrypted to prevent piracy. MiEx cannot read these encrypted files, and so you cannot use them with MiEx. If you are a Marketplace partner wanting to create marketing content using your addons, then use the original unencrypted versions rather than the encrypted versions downloaded from the Marketplace.

Entities

MiEx has very limited support for exporting out Bedrock Edition entities and having them be animated. This is mainly meant for NPCs in maps with idle animations, so that you won't need to set that up yourself. MiEx does require all resource pack and behavior pack files for that entity in order to be able to export and simulate them. Use the "Entities" button in the "Advanced Settings Panel" in order to enable MiEx to export those entities out and simulate them if desired.

Animated Blocks

MiEx supports exporting out animated blocks, which can be achieved in Minecraft Bedrock Edition resource packs as well. Blocks may specify a component called miex:animation whose value is a string specifying the identifier of an animation (note a Bedrock Edition animation not an animation controller). That animation is then loaded and applied to the block's model.

Animated blocks therefore could be created in a program like Blockbench, by creating a "Bedrock Entity". You can then create your block model and animation for it. Then a Minecraft Bedrock Edition blockstate file could be created in the resource pack's blocks folder with data that's roughly equivalent to the following:

{
  "format_version": "1.21.60",
  "minecraft:block": {
    "description": {
      "identifier": "<block id>"
    },
    "components": {
      "minecraft:geometry": {
        "identifier": "<geometry id>"
      },
      "minecraft:material_instances":{
        "*": {
          "texture": "<texture id>"
        }
      },
      "miex:animation": "<animation id>"
    }
  }
}

The model file from Blockbench can be placed in models/blocks and the animation file in animations. MiEx should then be able to recognise this and export out the block with the animation.