Glowing textures for items, blocks, props and armour

To make part of a texture glow, put a second picture next to it with the same name plus _emissive. Lode Items draws it over the texture at full brightness, so those pixels shine even at night or deep in a cave. There’s no config key: the file being there is enough.

items/weapons/ember_blade/
├── ember_blade.yml
├── ember_blade.png            the sword
└── ember_blade_emissive.png   only the molten core and the gem, everything else transparent

items/weapons/ember_blade/ember_blade.yml

ember_blade:
  material: iron_sword
  name: "<gold>Ember Blade"
  texture: ember_blade.png      # ember_blade_emissive.png beside it makes parts of it glow

Drawing the glow

Make it the same size as the texture. Paint the parts that should glow, and leave the rest transparent.
Its pixels are drawn over the texture, so you can paint them in a brighter colour than the texture has there, or copy the texture’s own pixels to make them glow as they are.
Draw glowing pixels opaque. Pixels less than half opaque only tint the texture, without glowing.
For an animated texture, the glow can be one frame (it’s repeated down every frame) or the whole strip. A glow of any other size is stretched to fit, with a warning.

Don’t use interpolate in the .mcmeta of an animated texture that glows. Blended frames break the glow, so it would flicker.

A glowing texture is only drawn bright. It doesn’t light up what’s around it: give a block or prop light: for that.

Where it works

Content	How
Items	Beside the item’s `texture`, or beside any texture its `model` uses.
Blocks	Beside `texture`, any of the `textures:` faces, or any texture a block’s `model` uses.
Connected blocks	Give `texture` its glow. It’s cut into tiles the same way as the texture.
Props	Beside any texture the model uses.
Armour	Beside the worn textures (`body`, `legs` and the other layers).
3D armour	In the `.bbmodel`, a texture named like another plus `_emissive` is that texture’s glow. A texture loaded from a file can also have a `<file>_emissive.png` beside it.
Paintings	Beside the painting’s texture.

Glyphs and fluids don’t use glowing textures. Fluids have their own glow and light options instead.

Shader packs

Shader packs draw the game in their own way, so Lode Items adds the glow to the pack in their formats as well:

No shader pack: works for everyone with the resource pack.
OptiFine, and Entity Texture Features for entities and armour, read the glow from _e textures, which Lode Items writes for you.
Iris shader packs that support LabPBR resource packs read it from _s textures, also written for you.

Shader packs that read neither show the texture without its glow.

Without shader packs, glowing needs Lode Items’ own versions of some of the game’s shaders. They’re only added to the pack when something glows. Another resource pack that replaces the same shaders can’t be used at the same time.

Examples that come with Lode Items

Example	Glows
Ember (`items/materials/ember/`)	Most of the ember.
Ember Blade (`items/weapons/ember_blade/`)	Its molten core and the pommel gem.
Glacier Greatsword (`items/weapons/glacier_greatsword/`)	The runes and crystals of its 3D model.
Lodestone Lamp (`items/props/lodestone/`)	The animated core, while it’s on.
Lodestone armour (`items/armor/lodestone/`)	The compass rings, from a texture inside the `.bbmodel`.

Getting Started

Items

Blocks and fluids

Elements

Text and sound

Server

Glowing textures for items, blocks, props and armour

Drawing the glow

Where it works

Shader packs

Examples that come with Lode Items

​Drawing the glow

​Where it works

​Shader packs

​Examples that come with Lode Items

Drawing the glow

Where it works

Shader packs

Examples that come with Lode Items