Voxel Particles

Vanilla particles are flat cards that always face the camera. Voxel Particles turns each one into a small 3D model built from the sprite's own pixels.

Every sprite particle, vanilla or modded, is picked up automatically (even resourcepacks).

Showcase

Break block particles

Campfire smoke with real depth

Crumbs of the food you eat

Potion effect particles

Modded particles (example: Fire Staff from Wizards)

On and off comparison

In-game settings

Features

• Any particle, any mod. Vanilla and modded sprite particles become 3D with no extra support.
• Real crumbs. Block and item particles keep their own piece of the texture and its shape.
• Four motions. None, gentle sway (default), spin and tumble.
• Physical debris. Falling crumbs tumble in the air and land flat on the ground.
• Any resource pack. Custom textures turn 3D just like the vanilla ones.
• Knows when to back off. Distant and tiny particles stay flat, meshes are cached, and a watchdog pauses the effect for a few seconds if it ever gets too expensive.

Compatibility

One exception: particles that draw their own geometry instead of a sprite stay as they are. For example, the slash effects of Better Combat remain flat.

Configuration

Change settings in game through Mod Menu, or edit config/voxelparticles.json.

Global options

Per-type options

Block, item and other particles each have their own section: blocks, items and particles. They take the same options:

Example:

{
  "blocks": { "depth": 3.0, "motion": "TUMBLE" },
  "items": { "depth": 1.0, "motion": "TUMBLE" },
  "particles": { "depth": 0.3, "motion": "SWAY" }
}

Keeping a particle flat

Big effects like sweeps and explosions look better flat, so a few sprites are excluded out of the box:

"excludedSprites": [
  "minecraft:sweep_*",
  "minecraft:sonic_boom_*",
  "minecraft:flash",
  "minecraft:explosion_*",
  "minecraft:shriek",
  "minecraft:vibration",
  "minecraft:missingno"
]

Add the id of any other particle sprite you want to keep flat, for example "somemod:glow".

Building from source

Gradle has to run on Java 25 (the Loom version used requires it). The mod itself targets Java 21 or 25 depending on the Minecraft version.

./gradlew dist                            # every target, jars go to dist/
./gradlew build -Ptargets=1.21.4-fabric   # a single target