Why My Custom Block Model Wasn’t Loading (And How I Fixed It)

Posting this because I spent more time on it than I’d like to admit, and I’ve seen others hit the same wall.

The problem

My custom block registered correctly, appeared in the creative tab, but rendered as a missing texture cube.

No errors at runtime, just a purple-black block.

What I checked first

• Registry name was correct

• Blockstate JSON existed

• Model JSON paths looked fine

• Textures were in the right folder

Everything looked correct.

The actual issue

The problem was a mismatch between the blockstate JSON and model file names.

Example mistake:

blockstates/my_block.json
models/block/myblock.json

Forge does not warn you when these names don’t match exactly.

The fix

Make sure naming is consistent everywhere:

• blockstates

• models/block

• models/item

• registry name

Also ensure that:

• JSON files are lowercase

• no extra underscores or hyphens exist

• resource reload cache is cleared

Restarting the client after fixing resource paths helped immediately.

Takeaway

If your block exists but renders wrong, the issue is almost always:

• naming mismatch

• resource path typo

• cached resource reload

Hopefully this saves someone else an hour.