Hello everyone.

 

I'm a bit confused as to how one goes about rendering tile entities as an item? (i.e, non 1x1 "blocks" in the players hand, with prominent examples being the fencepost and anvil)

 

The tileentity I'm attempting to make into an "item" renders fine when I place it down. No issues.

 

However, in the inventory it shows up as a flat missing texture square. I tried rendering it as a 3d item, which didn't seem to be applicable.  Rather it seems that I need to register it using a block handler and assign it a render id, which I then pass to my tile's block. (I may be wrong)

 

Now, I'm not asking for anyone to write an enormous block of code. I just need a hearty push in the right direction. Maybe a pointer or two to some useful Opengl/render engine methods/techniques? A short example? A example in the vanilla source?

 

Regardless, I'm grateful for any help. =)

 

Oh, and a note: I used forge's getNextAvailableRenderId function in my client proxy, and it appears to return a value of -1. Which specifies no render function, I believe? Also, the file size of my tile's texture is 64x32. (I need to adjust it)

 

 

 

 

AFAIK, tileentity only exists after block is placed in world, so you'll have to use a custom blockrenderer if you want it to look different from vanilla blocks, when it is only an item (in your inventory, or floating around in the world).

You can also use different vanilla rendering by changing of render type value in your block. (like, use 2 for cross squared a.k.a grass render)

For example, you can use ISimpleBlockRenderer, use the methods to render your item in world and inventory, and register your renderer client side.

The answer to this depends on how much information your renderer needs to render the block as an item. Is the block ID and metadata enough, or do you need values from your TileEntity?

 

Note that "rendering a tile entity as an item" is not the right way to think about this. Taken literally, that's impossible, because tile entities only exist in the world -- when in the form of an item (in hand, in inventory, or as a dropped item), there is no TileEntity instance.

 

If your renderer only needs the block ID and metadata, you can do this using an ISimpleBlockRenderingHandler, registered using RenderingRegistry.registerBlockHandler(). Your block's getRenderType() method needs to return the ID that you used to register the handler.

 

ISimpleBlockRenderingHandler has two entry points, one for rendering a block in the world, and the other for rendering it as an item. If you want it to have the same appearance in both cases, you'll probably want to arrange both of these to delegate to a mostly-common piece of code that does the rendering.

 

On the other hand, if you need information that's kept in the tile entity, things become considerably more complicated. You'll need an IItemRenderer, and you'll have to find a way to attach the relevant data to the ItemStack, using the damage value and/or an attached NBTTagCompound, which may require a custom ItemBlock class. Let me know if you need more guidance about that.

 

I used forge's getNextAvailableRenderId function in my client proxy, and it appears to return a value of -1

 

That's strange -- it works fine for me. Are you absolutely sure that's what's happening?

Thanks for the replies!

 

I figured that was the procedure. So as of now, I have a class that implements ISimpleBlockRenderingHandler and fixed the issue with the render id. Seems I was calling it from my common proxy. Simple mistake.

 

At a glance, the methods seem self-explanatory. I'm guessing that renderWorldBlock is overriden by the tile's renderer when it's placed down. Whereas renderInventoryBlock isn't, as it's in the inventory? And it uses the block's icon?

 

I entertained this notion for a while and here's what I came up with:

 

 

public renderInventoryBlock(....) {
final Tessellator tess = Tessellator.instance;

	GL11.glColor4f(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f);
	renderer.setRenderBounds(0.0625F, 0.0F, 0.0625F, 0.922F, 0.871F, 0.922F);
	tess.startDrawingQuads();
	renderer.renderFaceYPos(block, 0.0D, 0.0D, 0.0D, block.getIcon(0, metadata));
	tess.draw();
}

 

 

And...success! I have the top face to my block.

 

On the other hand, if you need information that's kept in the tile entity, things become considerably more complicated. You'll need an IItemRenderer, and you'll have to find a way to attach the relevant data to the ItemStack, using the damage value and/or an attached NBTTagCompound, which may require a custom ItemBlock class. Let me know if you need more guidance about that.

 

I wasn't planning on doing on that, but you've piqued my interest! I'm guessing you could accomplish this utilizing network packets, but the specifics of how you single out the one particular block eludes me. Do you have any insight?

 

At a glance, the methods seem self-explanatory. I'm guessing that renderWorldBlock is overriden by the tile's renderer when it's placed down. Whereas renderInventoryBlock isn't, as it's in the inventory? And it uses the block's icon?

No, each block is rendered first then comes the tile entities.

Doing both may induce rendering glitch. (or at worst, crash with "Already tessellating"/"Not tessellating")

You can use this mechanism to render partly block / partly tile entity, if you are careful enough.