Beautiful textures! They're what stops Minecraft just being a bunch of bland, grey rectangles that nobody likes. Luckily, Minecraft is full of lovely textures that have been getting an intense makeover for the last year, courtesy of Lead Pixel Artist at Mojang, Jasper Boestra.
Jasper's Minecraft avatar! Don't be put off by the terrifying skeleton – he's a lovely boy really.
Jasper's been sprucing up the Minecraft textures for a long time now, and waaaaaaay back in January, we released Version 2 of the textures in a downloadable pack. And now, 'just' ten months later, it's time for Version 3!
Minecraft: Java Edition players can try Version Three today! This pack will also be coming to all versions of Minecraft that have the Minecraft Marketplace very soon as a free download and we'll update this story as soon as it's available.
This texture pack for Java edition will work a lot like the snapshots we frequently release, so be warned that errors may occur. Here's how you can install it in Minecraft Java!
Click this line of snazzy green text to download the texture pack. Easy! You'll now have a .zip file.
Copy that .zip file.
Open Minecraft: Java Edition
On the main menu, select Options and then Resource Packs.
Select Open Resource Pack Folder.
This will open that folder. Now just paste the .zip file you copied earlier into this folder.
Once it's finished pasting, close the folder and go back to Minecraft.
Under Resource Packs, you'll see a list of Available Resource Packs. Your new texture pack should now be on this list! Select it and you're done!
Having issues? Try this link for step-by-step instructions for different devices.
To celebrate the new textures, I asked Jasper Boestra if he'd be so kind as to give Minecraft.net an EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW. Because he's so wonderful and generous, he said yes!
Disclaimer: To make the interview more accessible, the author has chosen to delete 235 of the 237 uses of the word 'bro' that occurred during the following conversation:
Tom Stone: Hey bro.
Jasper Boestra: Sup bro.
Tom: Congratulations on Version 3! What was the main feedback you took on from Version 2?
Jasper: The main feedback that I got is that things were blurry. That was because I’d used the pixel art technique called anti-aliasing. That technique is used in pixel-art to blend things better, but if you over-use it, things tend to get blurry and because Minecraft is such a low-resolution game, if you use too much anti-aliasing it will become blurry at some point.
So in Version 3, I decided to cut back on the anti-aliasing a bit and make things more crisp and more like the original. Also making things look more flatter.
Tom: What’s your process for redesigning a texture?
Jasper: Hoo, that’s a big one! So my process is trying everything, and listening to a lot of feedback from the community. That's why the beta packs were so important.
I get a lot of feedback and a lot of that feedback is the opposite of each others feedback. So, for example, one group says it’s too cartoony, the other group says it’s too realistic... so which is it? So I have to make a lot of compromises and sometimes I have to sacrifice parts that other people like.
Tom: So do you go by what the majority of players are asking for? Or do you have to use your own instincts a but?
Jasper: There’s always a lot of people on Reddit and Twitter and other active community places and I get a lot of feedback. I listen to feedback that actually resonates with me. if there’s something with a good point, or I feel like everyone agrees then I will look into it and look if there’s a better way to do it.
Tom: How can our lovely players get their feedback to you?
Jasper: You can follow me on Twitter! There’s a link right here. And I read the Reddit threads every day. Also during the weekends, when I’m on the toilet, when I’m cooking, when I’m sleeping…
Mojang Tom: Same location?
Jasper: No.
Tom: Do you like me?
Jasper: I like you a lot Tom. Will you marry me?
Tom: Perhaps after the interview. Minecraft’s got a massive modding community and people who design their own textures for the game – what tips would you give people who want to redesign textures?
Jasper: You can make whatever textures you want, in whatever style, but the most important thing is to keep it consistent. Everything should have the same kind of techniques used, and you should have some kind of rules in your style. It should be a vision for the entire pack, and it should all be coherent with each other. And use less cubes!
Tom: What have you got against cubes?
Jasper: This is more a personal thing, but I don’t think voxels really fit with the normal blocks in Minecraft. Sometimes I see is very voxel-y mobs – like a lot of tiny cubes in one mob where there’s a block – still a 16x16 Minecraft block. Those are two styles that are very much clashing with each other.
Tom: What's going to happen with the old textures?
Jasper: These new textures will eventually replace them all and become the default textures of Minecraft. They're not yet final though, and still in development, that's why I'm taking in all the community feedback first. The original textures will be available for free later. This might be directly in the game or somewhere else. We haven't decided yet.
Tom: Why is cobblestone your favourite redesigned texture? It's not mine.
It was always one of my favourite textures because I love the original cobblestone. I always built with it – if I built in Minecraft, it would be cobblestone and wood logs. That would be basically all my structures, so cobblestone is quite dear to me.
Redesigning it was very tough because everyone loves the original cobblestone for some reason, me included! (Laughs) I don’t know why! It just has this gritty feeling to it. I liked redesigning it because I made over a 100 versions, I think?
Tom: You're a Pixel Artist. Have you ever thought about becoming a real Artist?
Jasper: Nice. Have you ever thought of becoming a real writer?
Tom: Let's talk about the Illager Beast! This is the big new mob that’s been available in the last few snapshots.
Jasper: This is a thing that Jens wanted in the game. He wanted to have this gross, terrifying, big beast and it started out with the model that we have right now. He showed it to me when we were working on the Update Aquatic. He was like, “Hey, I have this beast, you need to texture it at some point in the future.” And I was like “Hell yeah! I want to do that!” – because it looked so cool!
I made ten different models – not textures for it, just models – to explore how it could look. But I think the original design, like we have right now in the snapshot, was actually the best one. It just felt good and felt very Minecraft-y, like the simplicity of it. I made a few models that were kind of gorilla-like, and they didn’t really fit, so we decided to use the original model and I had to make a texture for it.
The texture was designed to be a bit like the Evocation Fangs – the biting things that Evokers use. The fangs have a sort of skin texture colour and that I added to the Illager Beast. As if these creatures are related in some way.
Tom: You recently tweeted “Illager Beasts and Where to Find Them”. Would you like to take this opportunity to apologise for that tweet?
Jasper: No, it’s a good tweet! I just hope someone makes a poster of that movie with the Illager Beast head. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I was trying to instigate!
29 retweets? 386 likes? The internet was a mistake.
Tom: You also recently tweeted: “One of my dreams is to become a storyboard artist/animator for cartoons. :)” . My dream is to write for cartoons! Shall we resign right now and go and live our dreams together?
Jasper: Um... I still have this job to finish.
Tom: ...Fine. Jasper, thanks very much!
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