User Docs: Animation Format

This guide aims to show you how to use Minecraft's default animation format to animate Minecraft textures with MoreMcmeta.

Table of Contents

• Vanilla's Format vs. MoreMcmeta's Format
  • Custom Animation Parameters
  • MoreMcmeta-Supported Textures
• OptiFine Format
• Animation Properties
  • Structure
  • Property Definitions
  • Rectangular Frames
  • File Names
  • .moremcmeta Examples
• Image Layout
  • Image Example

Vanilla's Format vs. MoreMcmeta's Format

The main change MoreMcmeta makes to the default animation format is using .moremcmeta as the file extension instead of .mcmeta. MoreMcmeta also adds new parameters and supports animating more types of textures.

Custom Animation Parameters

MoreMcmeta supports additional, non-animation parameters for animated textures: blur and clamp. Vanilla supports these extra parameters for non-animated textures only.

Other parameters are not available in vanilla: daytimeSync (3.0.0+) and smoothAlpha (4.0.0+).

MoreMcmeta-Supported Textures

MoreMcmeta supports animating almost any texture, including textures that you can already animate in vanilla:

• mobs
• other entities (such as the fishing rod's bobber)
• armor
• environmental textures (such as the sun and moon)
• GUIs (including main menu textures besides the Mojang logo)
• map backgrounds
• "miscellaneous" textures (such as the enchantment glint and the shadow)
• blocks and tile entities
• items
• paintings
• particles
• status effect icons ("mob effects")
• pack icons (4.2.0+)

This means you can apply MoreMcmeta-only parameters to blocks, items, etc. by using a .moremcmeta file instead of a .mcmeta file.

You cannot animate colormaps because they are only used when a chunk reloads.

OptiFine Format

Please see the OptiFine documentation for details about animating textures with OptiFine .properties files.

Pack Icons

MoreMcmeta adds support for animating pack icons with .properties files, which is not present in OptiFine.

You must place animations for pack.png at the root of the resource pack with particular names. The animation frames (.png file) and the animation metadata (.properties file) must be in the same folder as pack.png. Furthermore, the animation files must be named pack_anim<index>.png and pack_anim<index>.properties, where <index> starts at 0 and increments sequentially. For example, a pack icon with three animations should have the following files at the resource pack's root:

• pack_anim0.png and pack_anim0.properties
• pack_anim1.png and pack_anim1.properties
• pack_anim2.png and pack_anim2.properties

If files pack_anim4.png and pack_anim4.properties were also present, MoreMcmeta would ignore these two files because they are not named sequentially.

The from and to parameters of pack.png animations are ignored.

Animation Properties

Structure

See Examples for examples of correct syntax. This chart merely describes how properties are nested.

.
+-- "texture"
|   +-- "blur"
|   +-- "clamp"
+-- "animation"
|   +-- "interpolate"
|   +-- "daytimeSync"
|   +-- "width"
|   +-- "height"
|   +-- "frametime"
|   +-- "frames"
    |   +-- frame index
    |   +-- additional frame properties
        |   +-- "index"
        |   +-- "time"

Property Definitions

All of these properties are optional. The default value will be used if you do not specify them.

Property	Description	Type	Default
"blur"	blurs the texture. Not all textures support the "blur" parameter. Use true for textures that are blurred in the vanilla game (such as the pumpkin overlay).	boolean	false
"clamp"	fills extra space by repeating the edges of a texture instead of the entire texture. Not all textures support the "clamp" parameter. Use true for textures that are clamped in the vanilla game (such as the shadow texture).	boolean	false
"interpolate"	generates transitional frames between frames that are longer than one tick	boolean	false
"smoothAlpha"	if interpolate is true, smoothly transitions between frames of different alpha values. Supported in 4.0.0+ only.	boolean	false
"daytimeSync"	synchronizes the texture animation to the current day time. Animations sync up to one Minecraft day (24,000 ticks) and change direction randomly in the Nether like the clock. For an animation lasting half of a Minecraft day, this means the first frame of the animation will be at game time 0 (day), 12,000 (sunset), 24,000, 36,000, etc. in the Overworld. Supported in 3.0.0+ only.	boolean	false
"width"	frame width (pixels)	integer	guessed from image dimensions
"height"	frame height (pixels)	integer	guessed from image dimensions
"frametime"	frame length (ticks or 1/20th of a second)	integer	1
"frames"	time and order of individual frames	array	determined from frametime and order of frames in image
"index"	the index of an individual frame (0 for first frame)	integer	determined from order of frames in image
"time"	length of a specific frame	integer	value of frametime

Rectangular Frames

It is recommended that you explicitly define a frame width and height for rectangular frames. When you do not provide a width and a height, the mod tries to guess what those values are. It is more difficult to guess the dimensions of rectangular frames, which may cause MoreMcmeta to not animate some textures.

File Names

The file name of the .moremcmeta file must match the original texture's name exactly with the .moremcmeta suffix appended.

For example:

• bat.png > bat.png.moremcmeta
• moon_phases.png > moon_phases.png.moremcmeta
• inventory.png > inventory.png.moremcmeta

Note that .moremcmeta is the file extension; a file called inventory.png.moremcmeta.txt is incorrect. You may need to enable file extension visibility in your file explorer to change the extension.

.moremcmeta Examples

Bare Minimum

{
  "animation": {}
}

All Properties

{
    "texture": {
        "blur": true,
        "clamp": true
    },
    "animation": {
        "interpolate": true,
        "smoothAlpha": true,
        "daytimeSync": true,
        "width": 64,
        "height": 64,
        "frametime": 10,
        "frames": [
            {
                "index": 0,
                "time": 5
            },
            1, 3, 2, 
            {
                "index": 4,
                "time": 2
            },
            8, 3
        ]
    }
}

Frame Time and Interpolation

{
    "animation": {
        "interpolate": true,
        "frametime": 10
    }
}

Rectangular Frames

{
    "animation": {
        "width": 128,
        "height": 64
    }
}

Image Layout

Animated textures should be .png files with the exact same name as their .moremcmeta files, minus the .moremcmeta suffix.

• bat.png.moremcmeta > bat.png
• moon_phases.png.moremcmeta > moon_phases.png
• inventory.png.moremcmeta > inventory.png

All frames must have identical dimensions and be in the same image. You cannot separate frames into individual files.

The numbers in this section represent the indices of frames in an image. A frame's index is how many frames away it is from the first frame in the image. Therefore, the first frame's index is 0, the second frame's index is 1, and so on.

Typically, all frames are placed in a column with the first frame on top:

0
1
2
3
4
...

You can also place the frames in a row:

0 1 2 3 4 ...

Placing frames in a rectangular format is possible but not recommended:

0 1 2
3 4 5
...

You should specify frame width and height in the .moremcmeta file if you do not place frames in a single row or column. This format only works well when all of your frames fit the rectangle perfectly. Otherwise, you have to explicitly skip the indices of blank frames at the end in the .moremcmeta file.

Image Example

An animated inventory texture with the column format: