Render Types

Render Types

Armor Hider uses its own render types to enable transparency on items/entities where vanilla doesn't.

You can check the factory at common/src/client/java/de/zannagh/armorhider/client/rendering/RenderTypeFactory.java (useful for other modders who want to mixin to the resolution of RenderTypes).

You can check the actual render types themselves at common/src/client/java/de/zannagh/armorhider/client/rendering/ArmorHiderRenderTypes.java.

Render types provided

• translucentArmor - armor layers with translucent blending and no depth write
• translucentEntity - general entity rendering (shields, banners, skulls) with no depth write
• translucentArmorTrim - armor trims using the ARMOR_TRIMS_SHEET atlas
• translucentItemSheet - block/item atlas items (e.g. cutout block items swapped to translucent)

Version-specific implementations

The Minecraft render pipeline has changed significantly across versions, so ArmorHiderRenderTypes has four separate code paths:

Version range	Approach
< 1.21.4	CompositeState with COLOR_WRITE mask to suppress depth writes. Class extends RenderStateShard to access protected shard fields.
1.21.4	SameCompositeState approach but with TriState-based TextureStateShard and dedicated RENDERTYPE_ARMOR_TRANSLUCENT_SHADER.
1.21.5 – 1.21.10	RenderPipeline.Snippet cloning with writeDepth = false. Pipeline fields + CompositeState builder for render type creation.
1.21.11+	RenderSetup API with RenderPipeline.Snippet cloning. DepthStencilState replaces individual depth fields (>= 26.1-snapshot-10). BindGroupLayout replaces samplers/uniforms (>= 26.2-snapshot).

Access wideners

Because RenderType.create() and RenderType.CompositeState are not public in vanilla Minecraft, the multiloader-loom convention plugin dynamically generates an access widener at build time (build/generated/armor-hider.accesswidener). The widener entries vary by version:

• < 1.21.5: Widens CompositeState inner class and the 7-arg create() method.
• 1.21.5 – 1.21.10: Additionally widens the pipeline-based create() and all CompositeStateBuilder methods (which became protected in 1.21.5).
• >= 1.21.11: Widens the RenderSetup-based create(String, RenderSetup) in the rendertype package.

The fabric module references the common module's access widener via the multiloader-loom convention plugin.

Notes

• On versions smaller than 1.21 it's virtually impossible to disable depth writes for translucent entities in third person. Entities render before translucent terrain, so disabling depth writes causes water/ice to render in front of the item instead of behind it. Hence, 1.20.x uses vanilla entityTranslucent (with depth writes) for the third-person buffer wrapping in RenderModifications.solidToTranslucent. First person is unaffected because the hand renders after translucent terrain.
• NeoForge makes most of these members public via access transformers, so the access widener is effectively a no-op on NeoForge builds.