Blockbench PBR Materials

Use get_capabilities to inspect the active project and registered format features, including pbr. Check list_textures and list_materials before assigning existing assets. Texture and material references accept names or UUIDs; prefer returned UUIDs when names overlap.

Preserve the target's material convention. Bedrock MER is not glTF metallic/roughness or an arbitrary ORM packing. A successful Blockbench preview does not prove that a chosen exporter or game supports the material. Align channel maps to the color texture's UV layout and inspect their dimensions before painting. Shared UV and delivery checks are in format and delivery guidance.

Vanilla Minecraft blocks ship ready-made Bedrock texture sets: a .texture_set.json plus _mers.tga, and some also include _normal.tga. To start from Mojang's own materials, use vanilla textures with --pbr, then run import_texture_set on the downloaded file.

Use PBR for Surface Detail

Follow the selected appearance/performance preference. Use aligned normal or height detail for small fasteners, rivets, welds, grooves, and shallow seat ribs instead of multiplying tiny cubes. Add regional metalness and roughness variation in MER; a shared atlas can represent aluminum, rubber, and painted markings without a separate material for each visible surface. Author valid channel data rather than treating an albedo image as a normal/MER map. To derive normal, height or MER maps from an existing color texture, use albedo to normal and import the results with create_texture before assigning them here.

Normal/height shading does not create silhouette thickness, open railing holes, or collision. Preserve geometry where these matter. Confirm the destination's rendering mode actually uses PBR, retain a readable color-only fallback, and account for the memory cost of extra maps. Bedrock's Classic pipeline uses the color layer; normal and heightmap are mutually exclusive texture-set layers. See the official texture-set specification.

Decide the shading model before texturing, because it decides whether PBR maps are worth authoring.

• Vanilla Java has no PBR slots; shader packs read LabPBR only when the user targets them.
• Bedrock Classic reads color only; Vibrant Visuals and RTX read texture sets.
• Stylized low-poly glTF usually skips normal maps.