Block Textures
My favorite blocks
Based on visuals ^^
Best texture updates
Mossy Cobblestone
Netherack
Cactus
Redstone Torch
Soul Sand
Crying Obsidian
Skins!
Skins I've made! Vast majority are Star Trek skins I made in 2020, which I posted on Planet Minecraft. Also one Asgore skin from 2019. I didn't make Steve of course, hes just a familiar placeholder.
Select a skin file to preview it! Right click the skin file and select "save image as" ;)
I begin my skins in any digital art program, focusing on the face and body, and finish them in the Skindex, particularly for the inside surfaces and the hat layer.
World screenshots!
Buddie was looking for a nice shader to use for minecraft and found Complementary Shaders Reimagined which I also tried out! I hadn't used Minecraft shaders before so it was very pretty! My computer fan struggled but my game didn't lag which was really impressive (especially since I used to not be able to play fast graphics MC on that same laptop with windows). At the same time we downloaded the shader, we made a new survival world, which these screenshots are of! Unfortunately the free host we used for the server held it for ransom after neither of us went on it for a little bit u_u. Thus we no longer have access to this world, but here it is memorialized!
Heres some shader pics:
Here are some screenshots Buddie took with the shader on (compressed to hell and back by me <3)!
My Texture Pack
October 2025 I made my first texture pack, Vanilla Spice, and I updated it just this July 2026! It gives vanilla Minecraft a cozy yet slightly gothic edge. It redesigns a few ugly/boring blocks, adds some variants, and even remodels a few blocks, but it leaves most unaltered, as to preserve vanilla Minecraft vibes.
While trying to figure out how to make a resource pack I learned a lot, so I made a resource pack guide for beginners like I was, hoping to be more thorough compared to experienced creators who may have forgotten the little things they struggled with at first.
Features and Downloads
You can get my pack for Java right here: Vanilla Spice v2 download. The link is directly to the zip file of my pack which is hosted right here on my website, so theres no sketchy shit. I also posted Vanilla Spice on Planet Minecraft, where you can find the Bedrock version too (which I have not updated yet).
The Java release works for versions 1.13 to 26.2 (and likely beyond). From 1.13 to around 1.20 Minecraft may give an error, saying this pack is made for a future version of Minecraft, but it will still work.
If you liked my first release better you can get it here: Vanilla Spice v1 download, also hosted on my site. Its not as polished but it does have unique fence models for every fence. It should work for the same update range.
This pack features:
Redesigned glass textures! Designed to look more like actual stained glass, with dark leading between the panels and richer colors. The pattern is based off of the restone lamp texture. The normal clear glass does not have the inner panels, for people who prefer less lines, but the light grey glass will work well as clear glass with sections, as they grey glass textures are just black at lighter opacities.
Redesigned iron blocks! The actual block, iron door, and iron trap door have been completely revamped to a much darker and realistic color. They now have a stronger personality, yet suit a variety of builds. Iron chains and lanterns have been slightly tweaked to match the color palette of these blocks. Iron bars were also retextured to have a simple, slightly gothic vibe, suited for both bars and fences. The stone bricks are just there to show how iron looks next to them. The clear stained glass texture is also included to show how its leading matches the iron. The redstone lamp (unaltered) is also included to show how my glass was designed after it, and how my tweaked lanterns match its vibes a little more.
Redesigned copper bars to have a diamond grate shape rather than prison bar shape, to better match the other copper blocks. Also slightly tweaked copper lanterns to have a little grate like my iron lanterns. The other copper blocks are not retextured, they are just there for comparison.
3D models for ladders and rails!
Short grass variants! Short grass now has a few more sparse varieties, a pale and pink flowering variety, clovers(!), 3D pebbles(!!), and tiny flower clusters! They won't be densely packed like this in game, I just wanted to show the full variety in one picture.
Bookshelf variants! Bookshelves have variants for a more organic look. All variants have slightly fancier books for library and enchantment room builds. The wood of the bookshelf is unchanged to keep it feeling vanilla.
Chisled bookshelves have also been tweaked to blend in better with the normal bookshelves.
Remodeled fences! Fences now have three rungs, and an entirely remodeled gate with a unique door texture for each wood type! Each gate swings open at one hinge rather than being a double door. The gates also have a post on each side so they are not floating if placed by itself. The gate door textures are based off of their wood's respective door and trapdoor designs.
Nether brick fences have a different model entirely, going for a gothic wrought iron fence design.
Mushroom variants! Mushrooms have been retextured to look more unique. Variants for both mushrooms include small, medium, large, extra large, and a cluster. The mushroom designs are based off of their corresponding huge mushroom structures: brown mushrooms with flat caps and red mushrooms with full caps, the exception being the largest variant for each. I honestly think vanilla mushrooms are rather ugly/boring, so I hope this adds some whimsical charm to them.
As a little treat, the biggest variant of each mushroom has little shelf mushrooms that appear to come out of the block below the mushroom, likely most encounterable on fallen logs.
Redesigned resin! Resin now has a deep glossy amber texture rather than flat orange. I'm gonna be honest, I think vanilla's resin textures are so ugly, they looked more like orange peel than resin.
Retextured item frames so that the frames are darker and the backgrounds are lighter. I didn't actually draw these textures, but made use of prexisiting textures. The frame itself uses the compost bin texture, and the background is sand (or snow for the glowing frame). I just think this looks much nicer than the leather background or the ugly glowframe background.
Redesigned andesite, granite, and diorite! These natural rocks were honestly kinda lame and boring. I tried to add some visual interest while keeping them in line with how they actually look, in addition to keeping them somewhat similar colors to vanila Minecraft.
Their polished versions also feature more contrast rather than smoothing out detail, because to me polishing makes things more vibrant and highlights details. I aimed for polished granite and diorite to work well as marble in builds.
Redesigned glowstone to mesh better with the updated netherack since it was not updated with it (netherrack here is for comparison to glowstone, it was not changed).
Retextured bricks. Normal bricks now have subtle variation in brick color. Mud bricks have a different brick pattern, greyer and with color variation to allow it to be more versatile in landscaping builds. Red nether bricks have a different brick pattern, with more versatile colors suitable for brick pathways. Regular netherrack bricks have been slightly tweaked so that their bricks interlock better when placed on top of each other.
Retextured carpet with a faint knitted/braided texture (which the wool blocks also have) and gave them little fringes on all sides.
Retextured leaf litter to have more vibrant fall colors.
Retextured smoke to have a subtle highlight on the underside of the puffs, as if illuminated by the fire.
Retextured rain to be clearer and paler, so that rainshowers are more pleasant.
Drafting my pack
My pack was inspired by a resource pack my buddie recommended, the Faithless texture pack. I absolutely love what they did with mushroom and grass variations, bookshelf variations, and enhanced 3D models for doors and fences, but there were some things I didn't really like or thought changed too much (no shade, just my preference), so I started deleting files from the pack. I realized after deleting so much, that I just wanted minor enhancements to vanilla Minecraft, where as this resource pack was a fleshed out artistic experience.
Luckily vision has lent itself well to baby's first texture pack, since I did not retexture every single block (or item or gui). That might have been doable in 2011, but there are way too many blocks now (props to those who manage it though!).
I started off easy, by just changing a texture png file for a few blocks that have the same texture on all sides: granite, andesite, and diorite.
Diorite was my very first retexture! I gave it darker splotches like it has in real life, and gave the polish version more contrast.
The first iteration of the three stones, andesite was the easiest, and has remained largely the same, diorite was tweaked some, but I had the hardest time with granite. I was trying to balance making it look realistic, recognizable as Minecraft granite, and just a decent looking texture.
Heres my first draft file of granite, featuring me painstakinly trying to get it look right. No it will not be the last draft file of granite.
This isn't even what I ended up with for my initial release of my pack (spoiler: I retextured granite again).
I unfortunately don't have the draft file for my second retexture of granite, but I do have it for my third retexture!
Despite being a simple block to retexture (literally just redraw one png), granite was one of the most difficult for me to get how I liked. I finally got it to something that has a similar enough color scheme to vanilla, looks like a raw rock, and looks like pretty marble when polished.
Here's my current textures for comparison.
Way before I got my stone textures all sorted (just started), I also retextured mushrooms!
They were initially a lot more subtle and small like vanilla, just a little cuter, although my brown msuhrooms have remained very similar. I quickly decided I wanted to go a little further with my retextures and variants, just because I could.
I then endevored to make short grass variants. Everything has been a trial and error, I got many errors like this along the way, but I thought the missing texture file looks funny in a grass cross. I think I was trying to make my clover variant here.
You can see my bookshelf variants in the background here! I don't remember any funny errors with those or any signifigant struggles.
This one actually is not an error! I wanted to see how the grass tint affected colors, so I made a grid of rainbow colors and used it as a short grass variant texture. I was trying to make the colored flowers seen on some of the short grass variants I have in my pack, a light yellowish flowering grass/weed/wildflower, and a purple/pinkish one.
Here you can see I also already figured out my stained glass textures, based off of the redstone lamp sections.
I had a large file where I was drafting repeating brick/tile patterns, but this is all I have saved of it. I put a lot of effort into making them tile correctly for only using two patterns in the end. One for mud bricks, and one for red nether bricks.
Glowstone was much easier to retexture than granite, thankfully. Most of my block retexture files looked a little closer to this, maybe with a few more iterations, but no where near as bad as granite. For glowstone, I started with netherrack and just drew over it. I kept most of the shapes in the netherrack, and tried to make it so that glowstone next to netherrack would look like it was almost growing out of it, or formed in it.
Minecraft short grass is generated so that it sticks up out of the block underneith it at a few different heights, ranging from being completely over it, to four pixels submerged. I designed my pebble model (a short grass variant in my pack) so that it has four pebbles, each of a different height, taking advantage of the varying height of short grass to make it look like there are different pebble models. With no submersion, we see all four pebbles. With full submersion, we see just barely the top of the tallest pebble.
I had some trouble determining how I wanted my carpet retexture to look. I experimented with plaid textures, and this cross pattern, but did not like the results. I ended up going for something much more subtle and versatile. I felt the plaid and cross pattern here were too opinionated in design, really only suitable for rustic builds. My draft file was large like granites, but I do not have a copy of it anymore.
This is how my fences looked in v1, each one had a unique model. I changed it in v2 not only so it was more straight forward, but so that they would be more versatile in builds. My fences here are either suitable for a yard fence, farm fence, or railing, many aren't suited for all. I also did not alter the oak fence at all, wanting to keep it vanilla. For v2, my new fence models were simple enough that I used it for oak fences too, and took the oppourtunity to change the gate as well, aiming for it to fit in with the vanilla oak door and trapdoor.
Dedicated to:
The Minecraft Wiki, and its contributors for making a great resource documenting the development of Minecraft. I've valued it as a companion to Minecraft since 2012 <3
My Buddie <333 for playing minecraft with me for a decade, our history and interaction is intertwined with this game, and would not be as deep without it. I love you so so much!!!
Mojang, for making and continuing to develop Minecraft!
Timeline
This is the longest section, considered the home, click the "signs" above for the other sections!
Beginnings
Minecraft exploded in popularity in 2012, but I had been introduced to it by my older brother in 2011. He gave me access to his Minecraft account (he's always been very uh Liberal ;) with sharing media) and I still use it to this day!
I believe my first edition was 1.7 beta, possibly 1.6.6 but I'm not sure. Either way it was before the end, before villagers, before creative mode.
It was a wide open yet starkly lonely world.
The nether was the most exotic you could get, unless you downloaded mods like the Aether mod, which introduced a new world with heavenly themes to contrast with the nether's hellish themes. It featured floating islands with flying animals and new ores. Interestingly enough there were also hostile mobs, though I wasn't very good at fighting hostile mobs as a kid. The portal to the aether was made with a glowstone frame activated by pouring a bucket of water in the frame. Some people did not realize this was a mod, and tried doing this in vanilla minecraft only to enter into dissapointment. Anyways, the nether itself wasn't very exciting, glowstone was the most interesting block as a cool lightsource.
I most often played on peaceful and made glass houses over lava lakes or water.
1.8 and 1.9 Beta
The 1.8 update (beta) was a major update to Minecraft, including:
Creative Mode!
With flying and limitless block selection (not even separated by category, afterall there weren't that many blocks yet). Before creative mode I had tried out a mod I swore was called indevedit where you could give yourself any item including monster spawners and single panes of a nether portal, and up to 99 items per stack instead of 64. After creative mode was added I hardly played survival for a long time.
Endermen
With green eyes
With endermen came strongholds and the end. Strongholds were accidentally left marked with a glass pillar, which allowed me to find one very easily when they were added. I then still mostly played peaceful or creative and never defeated the ender dragon.
Villages!!!
The first sign of sentient life, yet initially empty... adding to the lonely atmosphere. Still I was drawn to them. I had even found a youtube video for an endless village seed for 1.8 and was so jealous, but could not get it to work. I still don't know if that was real or not.
It really wasn't long before villagers were added to the villages, but the vacant houses left a longstanding impression on me. I was excited for the addition of villagers, which were initially supposed to be pigmen, an non-zombie version of what were called zombie pigmen (now called zombified piglin). In game the villagers initially had a floating label of "TESTIFICATE", leading minecraft youtubers to call them "testifates" (also "squidwards" due to their noses). Trading was later added, initially intended to be with rubies instead of emeralds, but this did not make it into the game.
Potions and enchantments were also added in 1.9, though I never really got into them (since I rarely played without peaceful mode on in survival). With potions also came the nether fortress, which added a slight improvement to the nether. Mineshafts were a similar cool addition to the overworld.
1.1 - 1.3 of Official Minecraft
Technically 1.9 beta releases were pre-releases for 1.0 of the offical release of Minecraft (not "2.0" as called in the minecraft youtube videos speculating about its new features). 1.1 added superflat worlds, which became one of my favorite worlds to play in both creative and survival. Sometimes when I made superflat worlds, they would generate with both superflat chunks and regular world chunks, which I though was very cool. I love chunk errors.
1.2 added the jungle biome and ocelots which could be tamed into cats! I destinctly remember watching a youtube video about a snapshot for this update, with obnoxiously fake posh accents. 1.3 added villager trading, emeralds, cocao pods, and a few structures with loot, the desert and jungle pyramids.
This was my most invested minecraft period. I was very excited for each minecraft update, watching videos for each snapshot before manually downloading and testing them out.
1.4 and afterwards I was less invested in minecraft, still aware of the additions, but not investigating them after each update. While some things I took to easily (carpet, stained glass, wood types, new flowers, banners), other things I did not keep up with like beacons, wither, fireworks (1.4), horses (1.6), mesa biome (1.7), ocean monuments (1.8), end cities, etc.
Buddie's Server, 2014 - 2017ish
In 2014 I met a dear friend of mine on deviantArt, who I call "Buddie". He invited me to his family's creative minecraft server later the same year. I was still not invested in updates, more casually building things. With a vast distance between us, Minecraft was the perfect vehicle to "physically" interact. We could hangout without necessaily talking and we could in a way see each other and interact with very basic body language that consisted of crouching and jumping. But of course we did talk a lot in said server. Headcanons for our shared fandom, our characters and their world. We had excellent brainstorming sessions. Of course it was also easier to talk about sensitive things like queer/trans feelings in a temporary chat. Between chatting we made many standing pixel arts, houses, and other structures.
In the summer of 2016 Buddie asked if I would be his QPP (Queerplatonic partner, to me its a commitment to one another but without the romance), and having been thinking of the same thing in my head, I said yes. If we are near each other in minecraft we can usually tell when one another is typing, since that person will be still, and he had looked like he was typing but then started moving around again, which prompted me to ask if he was gonna say something, and thats when he asked.
We have been together for ten years now!
2018ish
We slowly fell out of regularly playing minecraft and character brainstorming. Bedrock became more convienent for us, especially me since Java started lagging too bad on my laptop regardless of visual settings. We had worlds here and there, but nothing as long lasting as his family's server. My keeping up with minecraft updates became even worse. Though I did enjoy the addition of underwater structures, ships, and buried tresure (all of which seemed to be excessively common on bedrock). It was around this time that I was playing survival minecraft again, and no longer on peaceful mode! Though I never did set out to beat the ender dragon. I was least attentive to the village and pillage update addition of pillagers, how their raids affect villages, and all the new occupation stations for villagers. Though once barrels were implimented I immediately favored them over chests. Campfires and lanterns are really cool too.
Nether Update (2019)
One of the best updates, and the best thing to happen to the Nether!
Piglins! A villager like mob you can trade with in the nether! How cool is that? Makes the nether worth visiting and gold worth mining. I honestly like that they just toss random items back at you rather than complex mechanics. The obsidian has come in clutch too when I've lost my way. Makes the minecraft world overall feel less desolate. I like that they are a neutral mob that you can anger, yet also be friendly enough with to trade with, not wholey passive nor hostile. Not that there aren't other neutral mobs, but not ones you can trade with.
The crimson forest and teal warped forests are also excellent additions, adding some much needed plant life to the nether, cool mushrooms, vines, grass, and a new glowing block. Also some cool ass wood colors from the giant mushroom structures.
The bastonian remnants are another awesome feature, with desirable blackstone and its beautiful gilded blackstone.
The lodestone and respawn anchor are nice quality of life additions that make the nether more explorable. The usage of glowstone in the respawn anchor is also adds importance to the nether exclusive block (since you can't make an aether portal with it afterall...). The respawn anchor also provides value to the (re)added block, crying obsidian one of my favorite blocks for its asthetics.
Crying obsidian was drafted in 2011, as a respawn anchor in the overworld before beds were implimented, but its drafted texture was rather. Ugly. Still its cool that after all these years it was reimplimented as a respawn anchor for the nether! Fitting considering nether portals are made of obsidian.
Of course there was also the addition of netherite, allowing armour and tools stronger than diamond to be made. Smelted from the new ancient debris ore in the nether, netherite also made the nether more worthwhile. Unfortunately it seems they have added smithing templates in 2023 as a requirement to make netherite armour and tools, which I think is an unnecessary and confusing new item. They would be fine for just the trims, but as necessary for netherite upgrade is irritating.
Caves and Cliffs (2021)
The other best update along with the nether update. Caves are now fun and exciting!
- Lush caves with vines, moss, flowering trees, and glowing fruit!
- amethyst geodes, aquifers, stalagmites, stalactites, pillars!
- expanded lower limits of the world with the dark beautiful deepslate and respective ores, which also produces the best brick block, tiled deepslate
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How to make deepslate tiles: cobbled deepslate > polished deepslate > deepslate bricks > deepslate tiles.
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- Massive sprawling cave systems! You will get lost and spend an eternity mining in them (and find lots of valuable ore!)
- glow squids and axolotl, rather useless, but so endearing and enriching to the enviroment.
- Of course there are the mountains and funky upper terrain generation, which is cool, but I am more enamored with the caves.
Minecraft made me switch to Linux
It got to a point where even playing on bedrock with everything else closed, started to lag. I would check task manager and "windows updater" or "windows antivirus" would be hogging my CPU. I also moved out of my parents house, taking with me 4gb/mo of phone data and no wifi, so now I needed to conserve data, something that modern programs like to take for granted.
I tried Linux Mint Mate and haven't looked back since! I don't feel like my laptop is bloated with garbage, and now I can run Java, on fancy graphics even! Hell I added a shader and while my computer's fans struggle, my game still doesn't lag.
Unfortunately this does mean I have lost access to bedrock, since thats a microsoft integration. I'm pissed that in order to play minecraft I have to be connected to the internet for microsoft to "verify" my account and use my own damn skin in my own local computer files. Now I have upgraded my data plan with my raise, so its less of a problem, but I'm still pissed that internet is even necessary when you used to be able to play minecraft offline just fine.
Regardless I don't think my poor lousy laptop would have been able to handle the expanded world height and amplified terrain generation on Java.
Now
I just recently got back into minecraft (really bad, hence this page), playing Java again with Buddie on a free server. Everything since Caves and Cliffs is very new to me, such as:
- the warden, the deep dark, and ancient cities! I may not have ever defeated the ender dragon, but in this world I explored the ancient city and looted its chests (and only got killed a few times by the warden <3)!
- The cherry biome and its little pink flowers, very cute, the pink wood is delightful
- mangrove biome which I haven't seen yet
- camels and sniffers? Didn't even know about those until just now consulting the wiki
- Trial chambers? Not sure if I'll understand these
- Smithing templates, which seem kinda stupid tbh
- Bundles! Excited to see they added them, I rememeber they were planned but put on hold. Haven't used one yet, but will be useful for exploring and mining
- pale garden biome and the Creaking, I had no idea this existed until my Buddie encountered it and told me live in minecraft chat about a mob that froze while you looked at it, but sprinted towards you when you look away. I was suprised they would add something so horror-esq to minecraft, but its cool! The pale oak pairs well with the cherry wood. Resin bricks are quite ugly though.
- Firefly bushes, a delightful atmospheric addition
- happy ghasts, an interesting development to ghasts, a long time mob. Seems to be useful and unique for its flying ability.
- Shelves!!! Just discovered this and I am so excited! They are coming in 1.21.9. This opens up so many decorative possibilities, with both items on the shelves for bedrooms and kitches, but also as decorative trim! They come in all wood colors!
- More uses for copper! I was ignoring this ore while mining, but they are adding copper tools and armour, as well as making it a green variant for torches and lanterns!
There's more sections in the menu up top!