Animation placeholder texture

This page describes content that has been removed and was only present in earlier versions of Minecraft.

Pre-made texture atlases are no longer used as of Java Edition 1.5 and Pocket Edition v0.15.0 alpha, rendering animation placeholder textures obsolete. Legacy Console Edition did continue to use them throughout its entire lifespan, but this edition has since been discontinued and replaced with Bedrock Edition.

Animation placeholder textures are special textures stored in pre-defined texture atlases which serve as stand-ins for animated textures. When texture atlases are loaded into memory, the placeholder textures are internally overwritten with the animated versions; thus, these textures will typically never be seen in normal gameplay and have no effect on the final appearance of the texture.

Animation placeholder textures effectively "reserve" areas of the texture atlas that are going to hold animated textures, preventing an unwitting developer from accidentally placing new textures there and having them be overwritten. They also serve as fallback versions of animated textures, displaying in some cases where the animated versions fail to load or intentionally do not load.

While these were originally intended to be placeholders for procedurally generated textures, they remained present in Legacy Console Edition and for some time in Pocket Edition even after all procedural textures were replaced with pre-made animated versions.

Info

It is worth noting here that flowing liquids use a texture twice the size of most block textures (32×32 as opposed to the usual 16×16). This is not unique to placeholder textures, and can also be noted when viewing the equivalent pre-made textures for liquids in later versions, as well as applying internally for generated liquid textures. A larger texture is used here since the texture is rotated accordingly to match the flow direction, while otherwise remaining at the same resolution. As a result, 16×16 textures would be too small to show a continuous texture if rotated at all, as with the most extreme case, a 45 degree rotation, there would be clear gaps at the corners, as one corner to the other would cross ~22.6 pixels rather than 16.

Viewing animation placeholder textures in-game

In some versions of Java Edition, they can appear if the game is paused upon first loading the world, which can be done by having the game window not be in focus while the world is loaded.

From Java Edition Beta 1.8 until 1.5, if a texture pack is used which resizes terrain.png or items.png to dimensions larger than 256x256, the procedurally generated textures will become misplaced and partially overwrite other block/item textures due to using hardcoded coordinate offsets. This causes the actual blocks these textures were intended for to display the respective placeholder textures instead.

From Pocket Edition v0.1.0 alpha until v0.7.0 alpha, various animation placeholder textures could potentially be seen in-game. Water would display its placeholder textures on certain low-end devices. Lava, while rarely encountered, would display its placeholder texture on all devices. Fire, if hacked into the game, appeared invisible when placed - however, if the player got set on fire by standing in it, the on-screen overlay would display the corresponding placeholder texture.

From Pocket Edition v0.7.0 alpha to v0.14.1, they could be seen if the "Animated water" option was disabled in graphics settings.

Water

Java Edition

When the generated animation was added for water in 0.0.19a, the old water texture used before that point was kept in as a placeholder texture.

A second copy of the water texture was added in the 20091223-0040 Indev build, which was without a doubt linked to the addition of the flowing water texture.

In the 20100616 build of Infdev, the water placeholder textures were moved to the bottom-right of terrain.png. The still water texture remained as a single texture square, and the flowing water texture became a 2×2 square of water textures, as explained earlier.

With the split of terrain.png into separate textures and addition of animated texture images in 13w02a, these textures were decommissioned and removed soon after.

Texture \ Version	Classic	Indev	Infdev
	0.0.19a	0.31	Minecraft Infdev
	0.0.19a	20091223-0040	20100616
Still
Flowing	-

Bedrock Edition

Due to the first terrain.png in Pocket Edition being based off of the terrain.png from Beta 1.3, both the still and flowing water texture placeholders from said version are there by default. They were used as the water texture on certain devices, seemingly on either very new or very old devices relative to 2011-12. It seems that as of v0.7.0 alpha, the generated water textures would always be used. The placeholder textures were always used on Pi Edition (a modified version of v0.6.1 alpha).

They were updated in v0.10.0 alpha to more closely resemble the generated water textures, becoming opaque as a result. In v0.14.2, the procedurally generated water textures were replaced with animated image versions, but the placeholder textures remained unchanged until the removal of terrain_atlas.tga as a whole in v0.15.0.

Texture \ Version	Alpha
	v0.1.0 alpha	v0.10.0 alpha
	v0.1.0 alpha	build 1
Still
Flowing

Legacy Console Edition

Due to the first terrain.png in Xbox 360 Edition being the same as the terrain.png from Beta 1.6.6, both the still and flowing water texture placeholders from said version are there by default, and would carry over to the other consoles. The procedurally generated water textures were replaced with animated image versions in TU12, but the placeholder textures remained unchanged.

They were later updated in TU25 and equivalent versions to match the animated water textures, and were updated again in TU31 and equivalent versions alongside all other translucent textures to appear more translucent. In a PS4 version sometime between 1.76 and 1.92, they were updated again to match Bedrock Edition's water placeholder textures (despite the animated water textures being unchanged).

Texture \ Version	Legacy Console Edition
	360	One	PS	Wii U	Switch	360	One	PS	Wii U	Switch	360	One	PS	Wii U	Switch	360	One	PS	Wii U	Switch
	TU0	CU1	1.00	-	-	TU25	CU14	1.17	Patch 1	-	TU31	CU19	1.22	Patch 3	1.0.1	-	-	1.77 - 1.92	-	-
Still
Flowing