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Vanilla Resources
This page will explain how to get a copy of the vanilla Minecraft Java Edition resources. These essentially form the resource pack and datapack of the vanilla game.
These steps will use Windows and you will need the vanilla Minecraft launcher and a Minecraft account.
We will obtain the resources from the files downloaded by the Minecraft launcher.
As such you will need to create a profile for the Minecraft version you want to use.
To create a profile for a specific Minecraft version, select the Java Edition game and go to the 'Installations' tab. In the 'Installations' tab, click on the 'New installation' button.
In the form that shows up, you can enter a name for the profile and then select the Minecraft version you want to use. Then click on 'Install' to create the profile.
After clicking 'Install', a progress bar should show up at the bottom of the launcher. Once the progress bar is complete and you can click on 'Play', you are good to go.
For the remaining steps you will not need the Minecraft launcher.
We will need to open the folder where the Minecraft launcher stores its files.
To do so, press Windows + R or search for 'Run' in the start menu. In the window that pops up enter %appdata%/.minecraft in the text field and click on 'OK'.
This will open up the Minecraft directory which is needed for the next steps.
In the Minecraft directory, open the 'versions' folder. Here each folder corresponds to a Minecraft version. Open the folder corresponding to the Minecraft version you used in step 1.
The folder should contain two files. The files should end with '.jar' and '.json'. If you cannot see the '.jar' or '.json' part in the filename, you should enable showing file extensions in File Explorer.
The '.jar' file uses the same data format as a ZIP file and it contains the game files. To access the game files, make a copy of the '.jar' file and rename it from '.jar' to '.zip'.
Now simply open the renamed '.zip' file.
The Minecraft file contains the code which makes up the game in the form of compiled '.class' files and it contains the game's resources.
The resources are stored in the 'assets' and 'data' folders. As you might already see, these use the same structure as resource packs and datapacks.
All Minecraft resources are located in the 'assets' and 'data' folders and these are the two folders you want to copy somewhere to be used as a reference.