Transparent Wiki & Guide

Overview

Minecraft draws most models with an alpha cutout: for each pixel of a texture the game asks one yes-or-no question — is this pixel opaque enough to draw? A pixel that passes is painted at full strength; a pixel that fails is thrown away completely. There is no in-between.

That is why a resource pack cannot normally make armour, an armour stand, a cape or a painting partly see-through. Painting a texture at half opacity does not produce a half-visible model; it produces the same solid model as before, because the alpha value is only ever used as a pass/fail test.

Transparent switches a small, specific set of models over to translucent rendering, where the alpha value is used to blend the model with whatever is behind it. From then on a texture painted at 40% opacity really is drawn at 40% opacity.

The mod is inert on its own. It adds no items, blocks, recipes, commands or screens, stores nothing in the world, and does nothing at all until a resource pack asks it to.

Minecraft draws most models with an alpha cutout: for each pixel of a texture the game asks one yes-or-no question — is this pixel opaque enough to draw? A pixel that passes is painted at full strength; a pixel that fails is thrown away completely. There is no in-between.

That is why a resource pack cannot normally make armour, an armour stand, a cape or a painting partly see-through. Painting a texture at half opacity does not produce a half-visible model; it produces the same solid model as before, because the alpha value is only ever used as a pass/fail test.

Transparent switches a small, specific set of models over to translucent rendering, where the alpha value is used to blend the model with whatever is behind it. From then on a texture painted at 40% opacity really is drawn at 40% opacity.

The mod is inert on its own. It adds no items, blocks, recipes, commands or screens, stores nothing in the world, and does nothing at all until a resource pack asks it to.