I'm following along with a video tutorial on making custom items (it's still a pain for me) and they invoked ModelLoader like this:

 

   public class ClientProxy extends CommonProxy
   {
       public void registerItemRenderer(Item item, int meta, String id)
       {
           ModelLoader.setCustomModelResourceLocation(item, meta, new ModelResourceLocation(item.getRegistryName(), id));
       }
   }

Any reason they're putting it in the proxy classes as opposed to, say, the preInit() method?

3 minutes ago, Alex S. said:

Any reason they're putting it in the proxy classes as opposed to, say, the preInit() method?

It is client side only code, the server need not know about the model. You will then call that client proxy method in your ModelRegistryEvent class.

Not only does the server not need to know about the model, it cannot know. The attempt to call that method on the server will crash it with a ClassNotFoundException

I feel a bit out of my depth with most of this stuff. Aside from brushing up on Java, is there any place where a newcomer is recommended to start?