[Tutorial] How to get access to Vanilla Minecraft assets to use in your mods!

Ever wanted to use Vanilla Minecraft textures, models, particles, etc. in your mod- instead of the default MCreator ones? Then you've come to the right tutorial! I'll be going step-by-step with how to gain access to the Vanilla Minecraft assets of any Minecraft version you have installed on your computer from the Minecraft launcher. You will need to have the version instance natively installed onto your computer, so boot up your Minecraft launcher and play the version you want the assets of. I suggest 1.12.2, 1.15.2, or 1.16.5, since those are the versions that 1: MCreator currently supports, and 2: Are very popular for modding. I am on a Mac but this process should be easily translatable onto other operating systems such as Windows or Linux, the only thing changing being some filenames and applications. With that out of the way, let's move on to the tutorial!

To start you'll need to navigate to your "minecraft" folder. If you don't know how to get to it, read this quick tutorial: https://minecrafthopper.net/help/finding-minecraft-data-folder/

Once there, you'll want to go to your "versions" folder, inside of the "minecraft" folder because this is where all the Minecraft versions are stored

Next, open up the folder of the version you want the assets of. For this tutorial, we're going to be using 1.17.1 because I already went through this process with 1.16.5, but the process is the same for every version. In this folier is the .jar file of the Minecraft version. You'll want to open it with any extraction application you have installed, launching it with Jar Launcher won't do anything. Because I'm on a Mac, I'll be using Archive Utility, but any extraction or unarchiver application will do. You can right click the .jar file to bring up the menu displayed below and hover over "Open With" to select what application you'd like to open the file with. If your desired application isn't there, simply click "Other..." and select it from the Finder.

Once the .jar file is extracted (this can take a while,) a folder will appear with the name of the version you just extracted. Once you open this folder, it is very important that you set your sorting by kind, otherwise you'll be sifting through a sea of endless files. The image below is an example of the version folder sorted by name (not good)

To sort by kind on Mac, you click the shelf icon and select "Kind," it should work similarly on other operating systems.

Once you've sorted by kind, the "assets" folder will be one of the first folders you see. Simply open that up and you'll be given access to all of that Minecraft version's assets. Textures, models, particles, (almost) everything! Editing or removing anything in this folder will not affect your game but I do suggest that you duplicate anything you intend to edit, just in case you want to use that file again and don't want to have to go through the extraction process another time.

Now you can use as many of these assets as you want in your mod to your heart's content! Some examples could be easily getting the Flower Pot model for your custom plants, using Vanilla textures as bases for your pixel art so they maintain a Vanilla style, or even just getting the default Minecraft font!
What the "assets" folder does not include are mob models, code, AI, or sounds, but almost everything else is there!

In the "data" folder you'll find loot tables, recipes, structures, tags, and advancements.

The other 3 folders only contain things that the Minecraft developers or Java veterans would understand, so don't bother with them if you don't think you're experienced enough.

Have fun using your newfound assets to create bigger and better mods!