3D armour

Give a set a Blockbench model, and players see it worn in full 3D: horns, shoulder pads, capes, anything you can build out of cubes. It moves with the arms and legs and works on players, armour stands and grown-up mobs (baby mobs wear it flat).

items/armor/lodestone/lodestone.yml

lodestone_helmet:
  material: netherite_helmet
  name: "<gray>Lodestone Helm"
  texture: lodestone_helmet.png          # the item icon
  armor:
    set: lodestone
    model: lodestone_armor.bbmodel       # the 3D look, for the whole set
    body: lodestone_layer_1.png          # flat look: helmet, chestplate, boots
    legs: lodestone_layer_2.png          # flat look: leggings

lodestone_chestplate:
  material: netherite_chestplate
  name: "<gray>Lodestone Cuirass"
  texture: lodestone_chestplate.png
  armor: { set: lodestone }

This is the Lodestone set that Lode Items installs on first start, in items/armor/lodestone/. Open its lodestone_armor.bbmodel in Blockbench to see how a 3D set is built. Each piece still has its own item icon (texture:), a normal 16×16 item texture. Everything else about sets (effects, full-set) works as for flat armour.

Building the model

Build it in Blockbench around a player, with each body part’s cubes in a bone (group) named after it:

Piece	Bone names
Helmet	`head`, `helmet`
Chestplate	`torso` (or `chest`, `body`), `right_arm`, `left_arm`
Leggings	`hips` (or `waist`, `belt`), `right_leg`, `left_leg`
Boots	`right_boot`, `left_boot` (or `right_foot`, `left_foot`)

Cubes can be rotated and inflated, and nested bones work too. Only cubes are supported, not meshes.
Keep the player in the default pose (standing, arms down). The bones follow vanilla’s joints: neck, shoulders and hips.
Save the textures inside the model (Blockbench does this by default), or keep them next to it.

Shader packs (Iris)

Shader packs replace the game’s own shaders, so Lode Items also writes the model as a custom entity model for the EMF and ETF mods. Players with Iris, EMF and ETF see it in 3D, shader pack and all. Iris players without EMF and ETF see the flat look.

EMF’s model format can’t turn a face’s texture a quarter turn, so faces rotated 90° or 270° show unturned for these players. The console warns when a model has any.Armour no 3D set picks keeps its normal look for EMF players, and other EMF armour packs keep working.

The flat look

Not every player can see 3D armour, so each set also needs a flat look. It is used:

by players with Iris but without EMF and ETF,
on Macs and other graphics drivers without subgroup support,
for armour further away than armor.3d-distance blocks (default 48) in config.yml.

Give it as usual with body: and legs:, or add two textures named …layer_1 and …layer_2 to the Blockbench model, and Lode Items uses those. A piece with nothing modelled is always worn flat.

Limits

3D armour can’t be dyeable: the layer colours are what tell the game which part of the model to draw. Armour trims and the enchantment glint still draw on the plain armour shape.

3D armour comes with a replacement for the game’s entity shader, so resource packs that also replace it (ModelEngine’s shader, for example) can’t be used at the same time. Lode Items’ version wins and the console says so.

Bedrock players see 3D sets in 3D too.

Getting Started

Items

Blocks and fluids

Elements

Text and sound

Server

Building the model

Shader packs (Iris)

The flat look

Limits

​Building the model

​Shader packs (Iris)

​The flat look

​Limits

Building the model

Shader packs (Iris)

The flat look

Limits