Texture Slots

What is a Texture Slot?

A Texture Slot is a group of interchangeable textures. You paint faces with the slot instead of a single texture, and every one of those faces can then switch to any texture in the slot, in the editor and in-game.

Slots are perfect for anything with a few alternative looks: eyes that blink, a screen with several images, a shirt in different colors.

The first texture in a slot is its default. Faces show it until something switches the slot.

Creating a Slot

1. In the Textures panel, select the textures you want in the slot. Hold Ctrl or Shift to select several.
2. Click Create Texture Slot in the Textures panel’s toolbar.
3. Name the slot in the dialog that opens.

The slot appears in the Textures panel like any other texture, with its own icon.

The Texture Slot Dialog

Double-click a slot (or right-click it and choose Texture Slot Properties) to edit it:

• Name: used to name the slot’s functions and models when exporting.
• Textures: every texture in the slot. Drag them to reorder; the first one is the default. Use Add Texture to add more, and the eye icon to show a texture in the editor.

Using a Slot

Apply a slot to faces the same way you’d apply a texture: select the faces or Cubes, then right-click the slot and choose Apply to Faces or Apply to Elements.

• To preview another texture in the editor, right-click the slot and pick one under Preview. Previews aren’t saved.
• Painting on a slot paints whichever texture it’s currently showing.
• Deleting a slot moves its faces back to the slot’s default texture.

Switching Slots In-Game

There are three ways to change what a slot shows:

• Functions: each slot gets a function per texture, like my_pack:my_rig/texture_slots/eyes/closed. See Function API: Texture Slots.
• Variants: a Variant picks a texture for any of your slots, and applies them all at once.
• Texture Slot keyframes: switch slots at a specific frame of an animation.

Each slot switches independently. Changing eyes never affects shirt, even on the same bone.

Names

Slot and texture names are turned into function names when exporting: they’re lowercased, a trailing .png is removed, and anything other than letters, digits, and underscores becomes _. A texture named Eyes Closed.png becomes eyes_closed. If two names end up the same, Animated Java adds a number to keep them unique.

Version Support

Switching a single slot needs Minecraft 1.21.4 or newer. On older versions, the slot functions and Texture Slot keyframes aren’t available, and slots only change when a Variant is applied (see Layering Variants).

Upgrading Older Blueprints

Before 1.11, Variants swapped textures with a texture map. Opening an older Blueprint turns each swapped texture into a Texture Slot holding it and every texture it was swapped to, and updates its Variants to use those slots. Your Variants look the same as before.

Related Reading

• Variants
• Function API: Texture Slots
• Animations