anyone know how the vanilla grass block works?

[robustus]

Hi, I've had no problem creating a "grass" block, the only thing I haven't been able to find is how the vanilla grass block works in respect to the coloring of the grass.  Grass is unique that only the side texture top portion is colored, and the grass color is not applied to the dirt texture underneath.  I've copied the vanilla grass block code but when the grass is colored, it tints the side dirt texture as well, which is the kink im trying to iron out here.  Right now I've just set the side texture to the top grass block, but I'd love to be able to have the side of my grass blocks have the dirt underneath like the Vanilla one.  Anyone have a clue about this? 

 

Just to clarify I am not asking how to get a different texture to appear on the side of the block, merely just how the grass manages to only color the top portion of the block and not the dirt section of that texture

[vdvman1]

It actually uses 2 textures on the side of the block, one for colouring the top section, and one that isn't beng coloured, you can see this by lokking at the textures in the jar/texturepack

[robustus]

I figured that, but I can't find the code that makes that happen, anyone know where to look? Its not in BlockGrass.java

[gcewing]

It'll be in RenderBlocks somewhere. Stock up on aspirin before looking in there though, as it's a tremendously tedious and obscure piece of code...

 

There are two different branches to the rendering code, depending on whether ambient occlusion is enabled (I think this is the "Fancy Lighting" option in the video settings). In renderStandardBlockWithAmbientOcclusion() there are passages of code like this:

 

            this.colorRedTopLeft = this.colorRedBottomLeft = this.colorRedBottomRight = this.colorRedTopRight = (var17 ? par5 : 1.0F) * 0.6F;

            // a bunch more colour-setting code here

            this.renderNorthFace(par1Block, (double)par2, (double)par3, (double)par4, var27);

 

            if (Tessellator.instance.defaultTexture && fancyGrass && var27 == 3 && this.overrideBlockTexture < 0)

            {

                this.colorRedTopLeft *= par5;

                // a bunch more colour-setting code here

                this.renderNorthFace(par1Block, (double)par2, (double)par3, (double)par4, 38);

            }

 

which is what appears to be rendering the face a second time with different lighting when a grass block is being rendered (id == 3).

 

The other branch is in renderStandardBlockWithColorMultiplier():

 

            var8.setBrightness(this.customMinZ > 0.0D ? var26 : par1Block.getMixedBrightnessForBlock(this.blockAccess, par2, par3, par4 - 1));

            var8.setColorOpaque_F(var18, var21, var24);

            var28 = par1Block.getBlockTexture(this.blockAccess, par2, par3, par4, 2);

            this.renderEastFace(par1Block, (double)par2, (double)par3, (double)par4, var28);

 

            if (Tessellator.instance.defaultTexture && fancyGrass && var28 == 3 && this.overrideBlockTexture < 0)

            {

                var8.setColorOpaque_F(var18 * par5, var21 * par6, var24 * par7);

                this.renderEastFace(par1Block, (double)par2, (double)par3, (double)par4, 38);

            }

 

Since all this is hard-coded to recognise the block id of vanilla grass, even if you copy all of the code in BlockGrass into your block class, it won't render the same way.

 

Where to go from here depends on how much you want to customise the appearance of your block. If you want it to look exactly like a vanilla grass block, I think you should be able to get that by installing a custom block renderer that calls renderBlockByRenderType() and passes it the vanilla grass block object instead of your own block.

 

If you want to customise your block more than that, you may need to figure out what that code is doing with the lighting and do something similar in your own block renderer.

 

[robustus]

Thanks for the help.  It is definitely way too tedious for such a small aesthetic thing for me at this stage, perhaps I'll revisit when I run out of things to mod