Block palette tools for BlockDesigner: a Palette tool that repaints the selection with a live preview
(palette swap, weathering, gradients), preset gradients, a Palette panel, a colour palette exporter and a pixel art importer.
Palette Tools is a plugin for BlockDesigner, the Windows editor for Minecraft builds. It is released on its own, separately from the app. It needs BlockDesigner 0.4.24 or later (plugin API 6).
Contents: Download · Features · Building from source · Project layout
Get the latest version from the releases page:
- Download
palette-tools-<version>.jar. - In BlockDesigner open Plugins (puzzle icon) › Manage plugins… › Install… and pick the jar.
It is on straight away. You can switch it off, reload or uninstall it in the same window. From 1.0.2 on it updates itself in BlockDesigner 0.4.16 and later (Plugins › Manage plugins… › Update plugins automatically). Plugins run with the same access as BlockDesigner itself, so only install ones you trust.
- Palette tool (Shift+P, or any key you give it in Settings › Keybinds): repaints the selection in the 3D view.
- Select right in the tool: the left button selects as in Select mode (click, drag a box, Shift adds, Ctrl removes), or bring a selection from Select mode.
- Choose what to do in its options, bottom left: Palette swap, Weathering or Gradient. Only the chosen mode's options show, each with a line of help, and blocks are picked in small hotbar-style slots (click one to use the held block, drop a block on it, right-click to take it out of a mix, the wheel to change its share).
- Live preview: the result shows as ghosts and follows every change. Right-click or Enter applies it as one undo step, R rolls new random picks, Esc hides the preview.
- Transforms with the same three (Plugins menu), each in a window with a live preview:
- Weathering turns a share of stone blocks cracked or mossy (stairs, slabs and walls too).
- Palette swap swaps one material for another (oak → spruce turns planks, stairs, slabs, fences and doors), keeping each block's facing and shape.
- Gradient repaints from the first block to the last along an axis or out from the middle, with a random blend, an even dither pattern or hard bands, once or repeated (mirrored for stripes).
Its tab on the right has two pages:
- Palette: every kind of block in the selection (or every visible layer) with its icon and a count, most used first, with a filter on top. What it counts is at the bottom.
- Gradients: your own gradients and the built-in ones, each a strip of up to nine blocks. Click a strip to paint with it in the Palette tool, Hotbar puts its blocks in the hotbar, + saves your hotbar as a gradient, and the bin deletes one of yours (it asks first).
- Colour palette exporter: writes the build's blocks as a GIMP / Krita / Inkscape palette (
.gpl). - Simple pixel art importer: turns a picture into blocks, matching each pixel to wool, concrete or terracotta, upright or lying flat. With Pixel Art Generator also installed, Import asks which of the two to use.
You need Windows and a JDK 26 (Temurin 26 is what BlockDesigner uses; set org.gradle.java.home in
gradle.properties to yours). Then:
./gradlew jar # build/libs/palette-tools-<version>.jar
The plugin compiles against the BlockDesigner plugin API jars in libs/ (from BlockDesigner 0.4.27). The app
provides them, and JavaFX, at runtime, so they are never bundled into the plugin. To target a newer API, replace them
with the jars from a newer BlockDesigner build (./gradlew :plugin-api:jar :core:jar in the
BlockDesigner repository) and update the file names in build.gradle.kts.
The version is set in build.gradle.kts and copied into the jar's blockdesigner-plugin.json. To release a new
version, change it there, add a section to RELEASE_NOTES.md, build the jar and attach it to a
GitHub release tagged with the version.
For writing plugins, see BlockDesigner's plugin guide and API reference.
./gradlew test
The tests cover the plugin's logic that runs without the app, against the API jars in libs/.
| Path | What it does |
|---|---|
src/main/java |
The plugin's code |
src/main/resources/blockdesigner-plugin.json |
The manifest BlockDesigner reads: id, name, version, main class, API level |
src/test/java |
Tests (where the plugin has logic that can be tested without the app) |
libs/ |
The BlockDesigner plugin API jars it compiles against |