How to Make a Painting

A custom painting is a config in the paintings/ folder that adds a new painting variant: the artwork ships in the resource pack, and the variant registers through a datapack EcoItems generates in your main world. Players place it like any vanilla painting. This page covers adding a painting and giving players an item that places it.

Quick start

  1. Open /plugins/EcoItems/paintings/.

  2. Copy _example.yml and rename it to your painting's ID, e.g. starlight.yml.

  3. Set the width and height in blocks, plus an optional title and author.

  4. Put the artwork at pack/assets/ecoitems/textures/painting/starlight.png inside the EcoItems plugin folder.

  5. Restart the server, since paintings only register at startup.

  6. Run /give @s painting[painting/variant="ecoitems:starlight"] and place it to confirm it works.

Naming and IDs

The file name without .yml is the painting's ID. It registers as the variant ecoitems:<id>, which is what items and /give commands reference.

The structure of a painting

PartWhat it controls
ArtworkThe texture the painting shows
SizeHow many blocks wide and tall it is
TooltipThe title and author shown when hovering the painting item
# === Artwork: the texture ===
texture: starlight # Optional; defaults to the painting's ID

# === Size: in blocks ===
width: 2 # 1 to 16
height: 2 # 1 to 16

# === Tooltip: shown on the painting item ===
title: "Starlight" # Optional
author: "EcoItems" # Optional

Artwork

texture is a [namespace:]path relative to textures/painting/, and defaults to the painting's ID, so starlight.yml reads pack/assets/ecoitems/textures/painting/starlight.png. Use 16 pixels per block: a 2×2 painting wants a 32×32 texture.

Animated paintings work like vanilla animated textures: put a <texture>.png.mcmeta next to the artwork.

Size

width and height are in blocks, from 1 to 16 each, and default to 1.

Tooltip

title and author are optional, and appear when hovering the painting item.

Painting items

To give players a placeable painting, make a custom item with the painting/variant component:

# items/starlight_painting.yml
item:
  item: painting
  name: "&9Starlight Painting"
  components:
    "minecraft:painting/variant": "ecoitems:starlight"

Breaking a placed custom painting drops the item configured with that variant or, if no item declares it, a painting item that keeps the variant. Vanilla on its own would drop a plain painting.

Where to go next

  • The item: How to Make an Item for the painting item's display, recipe, and components.

  • The pack: Resource Packs for how artwork reaches players.