What is Halftimber?

Halftimber is a resource and data pack for making half-timbered buildings with exposed wooden framing. Halftimber adds a wide variety of textures that can be used for decorating your medieval, early modern and cozy builds.

How does it work?

Halftimber uses item frames to display logs, stripped logs and stems with custom model data. All logs are supported, each one producing textures in an appropriate color. Black wool can also be used to get black textures.

Because item frames are used for the display, textures can be rotated for further customization and to overlap them in different ways.

Textures range from a single block, up to 3x3 blocks. Check the texture reference in the gallery (also included in the resource pack .zip) for the full list. Textures originate from the bottom left, with the exception of diagonal_flipped, which originates from the bottom right.

Creative

For creative builders, only the resource pack is strictly necessary. A /give command with the appropriate custom model data is all you need:

/give @p BLOCK-OF-YOUR-CHOICE[custom_model_data={strings:["TEXTURE_WIDTHxHEIGHT"]}]

Custom model data is formatted as [texture]_[width in blocks]x[height in blocks]. See the texture reference in the gallery for all the options! For example, to get a diagonal beam, spanning three blocks width and two blocks height, color matched to an oak log:

/give @p oak_log[custom_model_data={strings:["diagonal_3x2"]}]

This can be placed straight into an item frame. You can give yourself invisible item frames via command, or use /data merge to make an item frame invisible after placing it.

/give @p item_frame[entity_data={id:"minecraft:item_frame",Invisible:1b}] 1
/data merge entity @e[type=item_frame,limit=1,sort=nearest] {Invisible:1b}

Alternatively, you can install the data pack if you want access to the timber saw.

Data Pack and Survival Support

Survival is supported via the data pack, though implementation is currently slightly clunky. Even in a survival world I believe commands need to be enabled in order to make this work properly.

With the data pack installed, you can craft the timber saw.

On right click, the timber saw opens up the timber menu. This is simply a written book interface with click events that will add the custom model data of your choice, as well as a tool tip clarifying the chosen texture and its dimensions, to the nearest item held in an item frame. If this item is a supported block (i.e. a log) then you should immediately see it change into the chosen shape.

On left click, the timber saw toggles the visibility of the nearest item frame within three blocks, allowing survival players to build with invisible item frames.

If you make a mistake then you can simply use the timber menu again to change your selection. Logs which have been given custom model data will lose it if placed.

Notes and Issues

• Birch Logs and Stripped Pale Oak Log use the same white color, which isn't actually a perfect match with either block. This is a limitation of the tint system used to color the textures.
• Warped Stem and Crimson Stem use the same purple color. However, the stripped variants are appropriately blue and red.
• Item frames and their displayed item stop rendering once they're out of the player's view. Because of this, the textures added by this mod may stop rendering as the player walks past or if the player turns, and the item frame that serves as their origin leaves the screen. This is more noticeable on larger textures like the ones that are 3 blocks wide.
• Because the system uses item frames, which are entities, there is a potential performance impact if you use a very high amount. I haven't noticed any impact playing on a midrange PC, though I do use Sodium and Optimized Block Entities, which also has the advantage of allowing item frames to render from further away.
• The timber menu suffers from the problem of every command displaying a warning message before it executes. In future I should remake it to use /trigger in order to sidestep this but for the time being I'm afraid an extra click is necessary.

Credits and Permissions

Credits

Credit to the Timber Frames Mod by Rasa Novum. I haven't actually played their mod but looking at the screenshots of theirs nudged me to make this pack, after sitting on the idea for a long time. The screenshots of Timber Frames also inspired the appearance of the wooden frames in Halftimber.

Permissions

You can repackage and redistribute the resource pack in or alongside world saves if your builds use it. The resource pack and data pack can be included in mod packs (or data pack packs?) and used on servers. Credit to Splunged (me) and a link back here are always appreciated.

Please do not include or redistribute Halftimber in anything commercial. E.g. please do not use it for paywalled builds you intend to sell, and please do not use it for servers that are monetized.