Fix translucent items vanishing behind water and glass (v1.2.0)

[ReimaginedPixel]

What & why

Translucent entities (armor stands and the items they hold or wear) render in a separate pass from translucent blocks such as water and glass. Vanilla only depth-sorts render layers within each pass, never across them — so a translucent item near a translucent block has no defined blend order and its alpha pixels composite incorrectly. Most visibly, the item disappears or gets clipped when it sits behind water or glass.

This is the same class of vanilla rendering bug ForceRender already tackles for frustum culling, and it shows up on custom display models (e.g. ItemsAdder furniture).

The fix

New ItemTranslucencyMixin mixes into RenderLayer#getItemEntityTranslucentCull — the render layer Minecraft uses to draw items in the world — and returns the equivalent getEntityCutout layer instead.

Cutout is alpha-tested and writes depth like an opaque surface, so items now resolve against translucent blocks correctly via the depth buffer. This is the least-invasive of the two possible approaches (the alternative being a much heavier mixin that reorders the translucent entity/block passes).

Trade-off: cutout loses soft alpha edges — each pixel is either fully drawn or discarded. This is imperceptible for the vast majority of item textures, and the behaviour can be turned off if soft transparency is specifically needed.

Config

Gated behind a new Fix Item Translucency toggle (default on), added to both forcerender.properties and the Mod Menu settings screen alongside the existing options.

Changes

• mixin/ItemTranslucencyMixin.java — new client mixin (registered in forcerender.mixins.json)
• ForceRenderConfig.java — new fixTranslucency option (load/save)
• ForceRenderConfigScreen.java — new toggle button + label
• ForceRenderMod.java — startup log includes the new option
• fabric.mod.json — updated description
• gradle.properties — version bump 1.1.0 → 1.2.0
• README.md — documents the new fix, refreshed settings/compatibility tables

Version bumped to 1.2.0 (new user-facing feature, not just a patch).

Verification

The sandbox network policy blocks maven.fabricmc.net, so the mod can't be compiled locally here. Compilation — including Mixin annotation-processor validation of the injection target against the real 1.21.11 RenderLayer class — runs in the existing Build GitHub Actions workflow on this PR. Runtime/visual verification (item behind water/glass with the toggle on vs off) still needs a manual in-game check.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01VaWtp4Tu17FEE4AtHU9hRo

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