Material Configuration Reference (.material)

In Minecraft Bedrock, a material is not a texture. Instead, it is a set of instructions for the graphics pipeline that dictates how a texture is drawn onto a geometry mesh. Materials decide whether transparent pixels are discarded or blended smoothly, whether the inside of a cube is invisible, and how lighting affects the surface.

Before the RenderDragon engine update, `.material` files could point to custom GLSL or HLSL shader files. In modern Bedrock, custom shaders in resource packs are no longer loaded by the game. However, `.material` files remain fully functional and necessary for configuring fixed-function render states, blend factors, and inheritance from vanilla base materials.

Material files live in the `RP/materials/` directory of your resource pack. The most common file to create or override is `RP/materials/entity.material`. Unlike most newer Bedrock JSON files, material files do not use a `format_version` key. Instead, everything is wrapped in a root `materials` object containing a `version` string set to `1.0.0`.

Material definitions rely heavily on inheritance. Rather than writing every shader path and vertex attribute from scratch, you almost always inherit from an existing vanilla material using the colon (`:`) syntax. The key before the colon is your new material name, and the key after the colon is the parent material it copies from.

{
  "materials": {
    "version": "1.0.0",
    "custom_ghost:entity_alphablend": {
      "-states": [
        "DisableCulling"
      ],
      "+states": [
        "Blending",
        "DisableDepthWrite"
      ],
      "blendSrc": "SourceAlpha",
      "blendDst": "One"
    },
    "custom_glowing_eyes:entity_emissive_alpha": {
      "+states": [
        "DisableCulling"
      ]
    }
  }
}

When creating a custom material in `entity.material`, choosing the right parent saves you from fighting the rendering engine. Vanilla defines dozens of base materials, each compiled with specific internal shader flags (`+defines`). Because custom defines can fail if a pre-compiled shader permutation does not exist in the engine, picking a base material that already has the lighting and alpha behavior you want is the safest approach.

The table below lists the standard vanilla entity materials you will most frequently use as parents or assign directly in your client entity definitions.

Inside a material definition, you modify how the geometry is drawn by adding or removing render states and defines. The JSON keys use a prefix syntax: `+states` adds a state to whatever the parent material already has, `-states` removes a state inherited from the parent, and `states` (with no prefix) overwrites the parent's state array entirely.

You can also configure how semi-transparent pixels mix with the background colors behind them using `blendSrc` (the incoming pixel from your entity) and `blendDst` (the pixel already drawn on screen). Setting `blendSrc` to `SourceAlpha` and `blendDst` to `One` creates an additive blending effect, which is ideal for magic spells, fire, or holograms.

Defining a material in `RP/materials/entity.material` does nothing until an entity actually references it. To use your material, open your entity's client definition file (`RP/entity/*.entity.json`) and declare it in the `description.materials` object. This maps a short name (like `default` or `aura`) to the exact material identifier you wrote in `entity.material` (without the `:parent` suffix).

Finally, a render controller (`RP/render_controllers/*.render_controllers.json`) links that short name to specific bones on your geometry. Using wildcards (`*`), you can apply a standard material to the whole body and override specific bone names with your custom material.

{
  "format_version": "1.10.0",
  "minecraft:client_entity": {
    "description": {
      "identifier": "custom:ghost",
      "materials": {
        "default": "custom_ghost",
        "eyes": "custom_glowing_eyes"
      },
      "textures": {
        "default": "textures/entity/ghost"
      },
      "geometry": {
        "default": "geometry.custom_ghost"
      },
      "render_controllers": [
        "controller.render.custom_ghost"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Applies to all modern Bedrock versions (1.16.200+ with RenderDragon). No experimental toggles are required to use custom `.material` configurations, though custom shader code paths (`vertexShader`, `fragmentShader`) are ignored by the RenderDragon engine.

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