Blockbench

Description

Minecraft’s visual style is constructed from cubes — every block, character and item in the game is constructed from box-shaped geometry textured with pixel art. Creating custom content for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, Java Edition mods, and Minecraft-adjacent games requires a modeling tool that understands that geometry, that handles the specific export formats that those platforms accept, and that includes a UV mapping and texture painting workflow that is suitable for low-resolution pixel art textures. Blockbench was designed for exactly that purpose and has become the standard modeling tool for the Minecraft content creation community.

JannisX11 created Blockbench as an open-source project and the community around Blockbench has expanded to include content creators creating custom player skins, mob models, item models, entity animations, and full add-on packs for Minecraft Bedrock and Java Edition. The application also caters for generic low-poly and voxel modelling outside of the Minecraft context, aimed at game developers who work with the same blocky aesthetic in other engines.

KEY FEATURES

Box Modeling

Blockbench’s main modelling workflow involves box-shaped elements — rectangular cuboids that scale, rotate and position independently. Each element is a separate box that adds up to the overall model. Elements group into bones for animation purposes, where a bone serves as a pivot point on which child elements rotate and translate. This bone/element hierarchy is identical to the expected structure of the Minecraft entity animation system, so the model can be used immediately in Minecraft’s animation pipeline without restructuring.

Mesh Modeling

Beyond box modeling, Blockbench has polygon mesh editing support for formats that accept arbitrary geometry. The mesh mode is used to add vertices, extrude faces, and create shapes that are not limited to rectangular shapes. This mode is aimed at game developers who work with formats that are not cube-centric like Minecraft.

UV Mapping and Texture Painting

UV mapping in Blockbench is the process of mapping each element (each box) of the model’s six faces onto a 2D texture atlas. The UV editor displays the position of each face on the texture, and lets you reposition faces to utilize different parts of the texture, or to optimize texture space. Automatic UV mapping maps out all faces without overlapping for new models. The built-in texture painter allows artists to paint directly on the 3D model surface, and the painted result will update the underlying texture file in real time. Pixel-by-pixel painting at zoom levels that reveal individual pixels of texture is appropriate for the pixel art textures that Minecraft models use.

Animation Editor

The animation editor is used to create keyframe based animations for models. Bones are given position, rotation, and scale keyframes on a timeline, and Blockbench interpolates between keyframes to create smooth motion. The animation is played back in the 3D viewport, to preview walk cycles, attack animations and idle behaviors before exporting. Blockbench exports animations in the Bedrock animation format, and as GeckoLib animations for Java Edition mods using that library.

Plugin System

Blockbench’s plugin system is used to extend the application with format support, tools and workflow additions contributed by the community. Plugins are used to add export formats for certain game engines, import tools to import models from other applications, extra brush types for the texture painter, and automation tools for batch processing. The plugin manager is responsible for the installation and updating of plugins from inside the application.

Format Support

Export formats include Minecraft Bedrock entity models, Minecraft Java block and item models, OBJ for generic 3D applications, glTF/GLB for real-time engines, and formats using plugins developed by the community. Each format’s exporter takes care of the specific requirements of that format — Bedrock models export with the geometry identifier and bone structure that the Bedrock engine expects; Java block models export with the display rotation and face culling properties that Minecraft’s rendering engine reads.

Web Version

Blockbench is a browser-based version of the application running fully in a browser at blockbench.net, with the same feature set as the desktop application. The web version saves project files to the local storage of the browser or exports them to download. No installation is needed for the web version, making it available on any operating system including Chromebook.