TileEntityRenderer

A TileEntityRenderer or TER (previously TileEntitySpecialRenderer or TESR) is used to render blocks in a way that cannot be represented with a static baked model (JSON, OBJ, B3D, others). A tile entity renderer requires the block to have a TileEntity.

By default OpenGL (via GlStateManager) is used to handle rendering in a TER. See the OpenGL documentation to learn more. It is recommended to use a TileEntityRendererFast instead whenever possible.

Creating a TER

To create a TER, create a class that inherits from TileEntityRenderer. It takes a generic argument specifying the block’s TileEntity class. The generic argument is used in the TER’s render method.

Only one TER exists for a given tile entity. Therefore, values that are specific to a single instance in the world should be stored in the tile entity being passed to the renderer rather than in the TER itself. For example, an integer that increments every frame, if stored in the TER, will increment every frame for every tile entity of this type in the world.

render

This method is called every frame in order to render the tile entity.

Parameters

• tileentity: This is the instance of the tile entity being rendered.
• x, y, z: The position at which the tile entity should be rendered.
• partialTicks: The amount of time, in fractions of a tick, that has passed since the last full tick.
• destroyStage: The destroy stage for the block if it is being broken.

Registering a TER

In order to register a TESR, call ClientRegistry#bindTileEntitySpecialRenderer passing the tile entity class to be renderer with this TER and the instance of the TER to use to render all TEs of this class.

TileEntityRendererFast

A TER can opt-in to being a “fast” renderer by extending the TileEntityRendererFast class instead of TileEntityRenderer and returning true from IForgeTileEntity#hasFastRenderer. Instead of implementing render, renderTileEntityFast must be implemented.

A fast TER can offer performance improvements over a traditional TER and should be used wherever possible. This is due to the fact that all fast TER instances are batched together and only issue one combined draw call for all fast TERs per frame to the GPU. This advantage comes at the cost of making direct OpenGL access via GlStateManager or the GLXX classes impossible. Instead a fast TER must only add vertices to the provided VertexBuffer, which represents the combined vertex data for all fast TERs. This allows rendering IBakedModels. An example can be found in Forge’s TileEntityRendererAnimation.