[GUIDE] How to make a texture pack

Sadly, you can not use MS Paint to make a texture pack, so you will need an actual texturing program. The most common and easy to use programs you can get are GIMP 2.8 (Free), Paint.NET (Free), Photoshop CS6 ($699) now obviously I'm going to recommend the free programs GIMP and Paint.NET for new texture artists but if you either have alot of money or are looking to expand the quality of your work you may spend $699 on Photohop CS6, or for the max quality of work spend an additional $300 on Photoshop CS6 Extended. So for this topic I'm going to be using GIMP 2.8 seeing as I use that program to make my texture packs.

To make a texture pack you need these files, to find them type in
%appdata% in Run, navigate to .minecraft got to bin, and open minecraft.jar with WinRAR or 7zip:

and if you make more good textures like this than you can make a good 16x16 texture pack such as this: http://www.planetminecraft.com/texture_ ... e-v10-wip/ (Of course I'm going to be biased)

Now, since I use GIMP 2.8 I will be explaining how to do this in GIMP. So first open up GIMP and go to FIle > New then change the width/height to be 16 and 16 (This is basic texturing so I will be doing 16x, but the process is the same for higher resolutions if you are making higher resolution change the width/height to 32, 64, 128, 256, or 512.) So one you've done that you will want to go to whatever folder you keep your texture files in, then navigate to the textures folder, click on blocks then drag and drop any texture into GIMP's workspace. For this tutorial I will be using the grass block. So you have your texture in your workspace but how do you get started? Well there are two ways you can approach this: #1 You can edit the texture directly on the block, using it as a guideline. Or #2, you can erase the texture completely and start from scratch, which is what I normally do. So, GIMP provides you numerous wonderful and useful tools. But we're going to be focusing mainly on the; Pencil tool, Paintbrush tool, Dodge/Burn tool, Bucket Fill tool, and the HSV Noise filter. So you're first going to use the handy bucket fill tool (OMG IKR we're actually using the bucket tool!) And fill in your block with a color. Then use the other tools (Pencil, Paintbrush, and Dodge/Burn) to design your texture. Now below are some BAD and some GOOD examples of what your first texture should look like:






Hoped that helped. (Note all of the above images are the same size (16x) they are jsut zoomed in more on some of them.)

Now as you may notice from the image above the smallest grass block is miniscual compared to the largest grass block. This is because of a thing called resolution. Resolution is the number of pixels something has. Minecraft's default textures are textured using 16 pixels by 16 pixels. There are 5 more common pixel numbers that Minecraft supports; 32x, 64x, 128x, 256x, and 512x, as you can see by my progression chart posted above (The smallest block is 16x while the largest is 512x), the higher in resolution you go the more detail you can put into the texture. The most common texture packs are usually textured in 32x or 64x, they have more detail than 16x and less laggy than 216x or 512x texture packs, so if you are looking at success I would suggest making a 32x or 64x pack.

Well, now that you have your texture pack done, you think it is good enough to be advertised on places like Planet Minecraft or Minecraft Forums, but how do you publish it? Well first, you need to go into the folder in which you store your texture pack, and select every file, then right click and select 'Add to Achive' then WinRAR's window will pop up. Now simply name your texture pack what you want and then either manually type .zip at the end or select .zip from under Extensions. Now wait for the thing to process and it leaves you with a .zip archive with all your files in it. Now you ask yourself, 'How do I make it so people can download it?' well my friend you need to register an account with MediaFire (I use MediaFire because I find it the easiest uploading site to use.) and click 'Add Files' then select Browse, navigate to wherever you keep your textures, and select the .zip archive then upload it. Once it is done you may post the link anywhere and people can download it.

Ok, you have now finished the great tasks of finishing your pack and making it to where people can upload it. But while on your way to post it on Minecraft Forums or PMC you take the opportunity to read some topics made by artists of new texture packs, you notice they they are getting lots of hate because they either did not include pictures (PRO TIP: Always post pictures to assure it isn't a virus) or they did not present in an appealing way, so let me teach you how to present effectively. Well first you need to come up with an appealing title that will draw people in.\
'my first texture pack' is not a good title. Instead you need to include some information about your texture pack in the title such as:
[1.5.1] [32x] Dat Epic Pack [WIP] as you can see that name would draw in more people than 'my first texture pack' would. Next, you need to post your topic. Now as mentioned above ALWAYS POST PICTURES, I cannot stress that enough, it makes the topic look much more professional and assures people it isn't a virus. To post pictures you need to go to http://www.imgur.com and register an account then take some screenshots of your pack ingame then upload to imgur. Then use the IMG tags to insert the direct link then your pictures will show up. Next, you need to post information aout your pack, 'Hey guys, this is my first texture pack pl0x download, DOWNLOAD: <Link>' is not a good way to present your texture pack, a good way to present your texture pack is so: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/172 ... ry21784800 (Again, biased). Then you needn't bump your texture pack no more than every 24 hours unless you are replying to a comment or you have an update as it looks unprofessional. /Rant ended