[1.19.2] How to hide or make transparent vanilla blocks?

[SoLegendary]

For some context, since this sounds like something trying to make a cheat mod would be doing, I have a mod that has you play Minecraft in a top-down perspective controlling mobs as units in a strategy game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kL4vyjE2Mc

One issue I have right now is that forests are very difficult to move through because you can't easily see your mobs through leaves.

To combat this, I want to be able to make these vanilla leaf blocks either completely hidden or transparent at specific locations (I know where all of the required BlockPoses will be to do this). Ideally I would like them to be transparent, but if they their rendering can be cancelled entirely, I can also render blocks which are partially transparent (eg. glass) in their place to achieve the same effect.

Another idea I had was to have all vanilla leaf blocks replaced by some equivalent custom block that I have control over, but that would be a lot of work and I wanted to know if I could do it without that first before attempting it.

Edited November 15, 2023 by SoLegendary
formatting

[SoLegendary]

Ok actually nevermind, I found I can cancel BlockRenderDispatcher.renderBatched with a mixin to hide the blocks entirely.

If there a way to do the transparency route though I would still like to know as that will mean I can retain the leaf texture instead of having to use some other transparent block.