Voxel Particles

[](modrinth.com/mod/voxelparticles)
[](curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/voxelparticles)
[](github.com/addavriance/VoxelParticles)

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

Potions effects particles

Modded particles (as 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

Mod or content · Status
Sodium · Works
Iris and shader packs · Works
Custom resource packs · Works
Particles from other mods · Works

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.

Option · Default · What it does
enabled · true · Turns the whole effect on and off
maxResolution · 16 · Detail: the largest model size per side, 4 to 64
lodDistance · 64 · Particles farther than this many blocks are drawn flat, 0 for no limit
excludedSprites · see below · Sprite ids that always stay flat, * works as a wildcard

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

Option · Default · What it does
enabled · true · Makes this kind of particle 3D
motion · SWAY · BILLBOARD (faces the camera like vanilla), SWAY, SPIN or TUMBLE
depth · 1.0 (3.0 for blocks) · Thickness, 0.1 to 4. At 1.0 every pixel is a cube
shading · 1.0 · How much darker the sides are than the front, 0 to 1
motionSpeed · 1.0 · Speed of sway, spin and tumble, 0 to 5
tumbleDebris · true · Crumbs tumble in the air and land flat (blocks and items only)

{
"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".

Development

Build 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

Project layout:

Path · Contents
core/ · Code that does not touch Minecraft
mc// · API layers shared by several Minecraft versions
loader/ · Loader entry points
versions// · One target each; version.properties lists the layers it uses