Block Tinting in Minecraft Bedrock

When Minecraft tints a block, it takes a base greyscale texture and multiplies its pixel values against a color sampled from a colormap (such as the grass or foliage colormap in the resource pack). Because the math is multiplicative, pure white pixels in your texture become the exact biome color, mid-grey pixels become a darker shade of that color, and pure black pixels remain black.

If you draw your texture in full green and then enable tinting, the engine will multiply your green pixels by the biome's green values, resulting in an overly dark, muddy texture. Always author the parts of your texture that will be tinted in greyscale. For blocks that only have partial tinting—like the side of a grass block where the dirt remains brown—you must use custom geometry or careful alpha masking, as a single material instance applies its tint method to the entire texture assigned to it.

For custom blocks using the modern `minecraft:geometry` and `minecraft:material_instances` components in the behavior pack, tinting is defined directly inside the material instance dictionary. Each face or named material instance can be given a `tint_method` string property.

This approach is far more flexible than the legacy `blocks.json` system because you can tint the `up` face of a block using the grass colormap while leaving the `north`, `south`, `east`, `west`, and `down` faces completely untinted. You can also combine `tint_method` with block permutations to turn tinting on or off dynamically based on block states.

{
  "format_version": "1.20.80",
  "minecraft:block": {
    "description": {
      "identifier": "wiki:custom_turf"
    },
    "components": {
      "minecraft:geometry": "minecraft:geometry.full_block",
      "minecraft:material_instances": {
        "up": {
          "texture": "custom_turf_top",
          "render_method": "opaque",
          "tint_method": "grass"
        },
        "*": {
          "texture": "custom_turf_side",
          "render_method": "opaque",
          "tint_method": "none"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

The `tint_method` field inside `minecraft:material_instances` accepts a specific set of strings that correspond to different biome foliage and water calculations. Choosing different foliage methods changes how the block reacts to temperature and downfall values across biomes, or locks it to a specific vanilla tree type.

When a block with a `tint_method` is held in the inventory or dropped as an item, it does not have a world position to sample a biome from. In these cases, the engine applies a default fallback tint associated with that specific tint method.

A common challenge is recreating the side of a vanilla grass block, where the dirt stays brown and only the grassy overlay changes color. Because `tint_method` applies to the entire material instance, you cannot taint half of a single flat PNG without advanced shader workarounds.

The cleanest solution in modern Bedrock is to build a custom block model in Blockbench with two overlapping cubes or planes. Give the inner cube a material name like `base_dirt` and the outer overlay elements a material name like `grass_overlay`. Ensure the overlay texture uses transparent pixels where the dirt should show through.

In your behavior pack block file, you then map `base_dirt` with `tint_method` set to `none` and `render_method` set to `opaque`. For `grass_overlay`, set `tint_method` to `grass` and `render_method` to `alpha_test`. Note that if the two faces occupy the exact same 3D coordinates, they may z-fight and flicker; inflating or offsetting the overlay geometry by a tiny fraction (such as 0.01 units) prevents this visual glitch.

{
  "format_version": "1.20.80",
  "minecraft:block": {
    "description": {
      "identifier": "wiki:overgrown_stone"
    },
    "components": {
      "minecraft:geometry": "geometry.overgrown_stone",
      "minecraft:material_instances": {
        "stone_base": {
          "texture": "stone_base_tex",
          "render_method": "opaque",
          "tint_method": "none"
        },
        "moss_overlay": {
          "texture": "moss_overlay_greyscale",
          "render_method": "alpha_test",
          "tint_method": "grass"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Before `tint_method` was introduced to behavior pack material instances, tinting was configured inside `RP/blocks.json` using the `carried_textures` property alongside shader-level alpha masks. While you may still see `blocks.json` used in older packs or for overriding vanilla blocks, you should avoid mixing `blocks.json` definitions with modern `minecraft:material_instances`.

When a custom block defines `minecraft:material_instances` in the behavior pack, the game bypasses many of the settings in `RP/blocks.json`, and texture shortnames are resolved directly from `RP/textures/terrain_texture.json`. Stick to `tint_method` inside the behavior pack for all new custom blocks.

The `tint_method` property inside `minecraft:material_instances` is stable in format versions 1.20.60 and higher, and does not require any experimental toggles.

Read out of the game itself, so the ids match the version you are building for.