MattNL's Minecraft Legacy Console Edition Research Hub

Animated Tiles Documentation



Words that are blue are links and might lead to helpful sites if you're lost in the reading. (:


Special thanks to PhoenixARC for formatting my research into a JSON file


What ARE ANIM tags anyway!?

The ANIM tag (short for Animation) is found in Minecraft Console Edition PCK files. It can also be found on skins but this document focuses purely on the ANIM tag that appears on animated tiles, such as for Fire or the Clock item. A dedicated document focusing on ANIM for skins can be found here!

Animation Format

The ANIM tag follows a very similar format to the Java Edition animation format for tiles. The atlas images are largely the same; one large vertical strip of animation frames. Usually these images are saved as .PNG files, but in Minecraft Console Edition, they can also be saved as either .TGA. .TGA files and their unique effects in Minecraft Console Edition can be saved for it's own document in the future. Assets aside, the scripts can also appear in a few forms:


1. Absolutely nothing. That's right, nothing.

When the script has no data inside, the game will play the frames in a linear animation with a frame time of 1. Several vanilla tiles such as Fire use this as their animations are linear by design.

2. "Frame Index Form"

This is pretty self explanatory. The script will have a repeated pattern of Frame Index * Frame Time. For example, a value of 0*2, 2*5, 1*2 would play the frames in this order: Frame 1 for 2 frames, Frame 3 for 5 frames, and then finally Frame 2 for 2 frames, before looping back to the beginning. Unlike the first form, we gave the game a specific order to play the frames in, so it will NOT be in order from top to bottom. Now, it's important to highlight that the Frame Index value starts at 0, not 1! This is standard in computer science, as 0 is usually used to represent 1, and 1 represents 2, and so on...

3. "Interpolation Form"

This form is actually identical to the Frame Index Form but it has one key difference... the appearance of # at the beginning of the script. Minecraft animations have an interpolation mode for tile animations, and Minecraft Console Edition uses # to decide when an animation is in interpolation mode. When in interpolation mode, the frames will generated interpolated frames inbetween and make the frames smoothly transition into one another. An example of this form would look like this: #0*5, 1*5, 2*3. It's pretty simple. Several vanilla tiles such as Prismarine, Magma Blocks, and Kelp all use interpolation to add extra depth to their animations.


Tile Texture Names

Minecraft Console Edition handles item animations the same as any other texture. Every tile calls a specific resource location. All animated tile names are in the res/textures path. Items are stored at res/textures/items and blocks are located at res/textures/blocks.

So for example, Prismarine could be found at res/textures/blocks/prismarine_rough.png or a custom Stick animation could be found at res/textures/items/stick.tga


The naming convention also leaves a lot to be desired as there is little to no consistency in these IDs. You can find all of the IDs below!


Minecraft: PS4 Edition continued to recieve exclusive updates past the December 2018 discontinuation of Minecraft Console Edition. Due to this, there are some tiles and tile names on this list that do not apply to the following editions: Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, PSVita, Wii U, and Switch Editions.