"Custom Item Appears Transparent and Clips Through Blocks When Held — Fixed by Adding 'render_type': 'minecraft:cutout'

🛠️ Fix for Transparent or Clipping Item Render Issues When Held in First Person (Forge 1.20+)

Hey everyone! I recently ran into a frustrating bug while making a custom item (a rocket) for my Forge mod, and I’m sharing the fix because it’s a bit obscure — and it worked wonders.

💥 The Problem:

My item rendered semi-transparent and see-through — but only in first person.

It also clipped through nearby blocks when held, unlike default items like swords or leads.

The texture file was confirmed to be fully opaque (alpha 255), so the issue wasn’t the PNG itself.

Interestingly, when no texture was present and the default purple-black checkerboard appeared, the clipping issue disappeared.

✅ The Fix:

I ended up resolving it by randomly trying something I found on a Forge forum post about block rendering. I added this property to my item's model JSON — even though it's typically only used for blocks:

{ "parent": "item/generated", "textures": { "layer0": "farbeyond:item/rocket_item" }, "render_type": "minecraft:cutout" }

Boom. That single line forced the item to render using a proper opaque (cutout) layer, removing all the unwanted transparency and clipping behavior in first person.

🙌 Credit:

I originally found the "render_type" trick mentioned here, in a block rendering context:
👉 https://forums.minecraftforge.net/topic/149644-1201-help-with-transparent-blocks/
Even though it was meant for blocks, I thought, why not try it on an item? And it worked! Big thanks to the poster — this fix wouldn’t have happened without that tip.

Hopefully this helps anyone else stuck on a weird rendering bug like I was. This isn’t a common item solution, so feel free to share it further. I’d love to know if it works for you too.

Edited June 19Jun 19 by Loghan
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