Content

Placing a model

A model is a Blockbench file and an item that carries it. Placing one puts a display entity in the world at its true size — not a block, not an armour stand wearing a helmet.

It is declared on the item, in a place: block:

content/mypack/
  items/furniture.yml
  assets/models/chair.bbmodel

chair:
  material: PAPER
  model: chair           # assets/models/chair.bbmodel
  name: "&eOak Chair"
  place:
    facing: cardinal     # cardinal | diagonal | free | fixed
    scale: 1.0
    solid: false         # true gives it something to walk into
    vehicle-collision: true  # false lets vehicles drive through it
    seat: 0.6            # sit on it, this far above its base. 0 is no seat
    light: 0             # 0-15, what it gives off
    surface: floor       # floor | wall | ceiling | any
    drop: mypack:shard   # what breaking it gives back. Default: itself
  permission: mypack.chair

/rp give mypack:chair gives you the item; right-click the ground to place it, and hit it to take it back.

Why it is not its own category

mypack:chair is the item and the thing you put down, because an ID is unique across the whole registry. Needing mypack:chair and mypack:chair_placed for one chair is the sort of tax that makes a format feel like paperwork — and it means the item and the placed model can never disagree about which file to use.

Size#

A placed model is the size the Blockbench file says it is: 16 model units to the block, no transform applied, so a model built to y=32 stands two blocks tall. If a lamp looks a block tall when you built it three, the model itself is small — open it and check the cube coordinates rather than reaching for scale, which is there for when you deliberately want the same model in two sizes.

Which way it faces#

`facing:`	How it turns
`cardinal`	North, east, south or west, like a placed furnace. The default
`diagonal`	Eight directions, for something that reads as angled
`free`	However you were looking
`fixed`	Always the same way, for something with no front

The hitbox#

Measured off the model unless you say otherwise. Whoever built it already decided how big it is, and a hitbox smaller than what you can see means most of a statue cannot be punched and the part that can is buried inside it. width: and height: in blocks override it.

solid: false by default, because a display entity has no collision at all. solid: true puts an invisible barrier behind it, removed when the model is broken — right for a bench, wrong for a rug.

Vehicles#

vehicle-collision: true by default, and it is a different question from solid: with a different answer.

solid is about a walking player, and it is bought with a barrier block — one cube, at the anchor, whatever shape the piece actually is. That is why it is opt-in: it writes to the world. This is about a driving one. It covers the whole piece rather than one block of it, and it costs the world nothing: a vehicle asks the placed models around it where they are, and no block is placed.

So a car stops at your fence whether or not anybody can walk through it, which is what you want in every pack that has a fence.

It uses the model's real shape, not a box round it. A block model is already a list of cuboids, so that is what a vehicle is tested against: you can drive a go-kart between the legs of a table and under an archway, and a fence stops you along its whole length rather than only where its anchor block is. Any placement angle works, not just the four cardinals.

Turned cubes keep their angle rather than being squared off, so a handrail collides where the rail is instead of filling the box around it — and a turned slab is a ramp: a vehicle rides up it rather than stopping at it. Stairs built as stacked cubes are climbed a tread at a time, up to a block per step.

Low pieces are driven over, not into

Anything a vehicle could step onto — up to a block high — is climbed like a kerb rather than refused, and a piece a vehicle can climb also holds it up. A rug is driven over, and a row of platform models is a bridge you can drive across. vehicle-collision: false is for the pieces that should have no effect at all: a painted road marking, a manhole cover, a decal.

Sitting#

seat: makes the model something you can sit on. Its value is how far above the model's base a player's backside goes, in blocks; a dining chair is about 0.6. Right-click to sit, shift to get up.

The seat is a marker the player rides, and it is never saved: gone on dismount, on quit, when the model is broken, and when the server stops. Nothing is left behind to accumulate in a world over months — a field of invisible things players can stand on is how this feature usually rots.

One player per model, and a model with a seat keeps its hitbox.

Light#

A display entity emits nothing, so light: puts a real light block in the model's anchor and takes it away when the piece is broken. A lamp wants about 14.

A solid piece cannot also be a lamp. One block cannot be a barrier and a light at once, and the barrier wins.

Where it may go#

surface: refuses a placement rather than turning the piece sideways.

`surface:`	Where it can go
`floor`	The top of a block. Chairs, tables, statues. The default
`wall`	The side of one. Torches, signs, brackets
`ceiling`	The underside. Chandeliers, hanging plants
`any`	Anywhere

A chandelier stuck to the underside of a floor is somebody's build ruined, so the wrong face is a refusal.

What it drops#

Breaking a piece gives back the item it was placed from, keeping whatever name or enchantments that item had. drop: overrides it with a different content ID, for a piece that is meant to break rather than come back.

Animation#

If the .bbmodel has keyframes in it, the piece moves — see Animation. Bones can also carry hitboxes, seats and nametags; see Bones that do something.

Who may place what#

Three gates, answering different questions.

permission: on the item decides who may place this one. Without it, anybody holding it may.

The build check decides where. A placement asks the server whether that player could have placed a block there, so world protection — WorldGuard, GriefPrevention, a claims plugin, spawn protection — applies with nothing to configure.

ModelPlaceEvent is the escape hatch for your own rule. Cancel it and the placement does not happen and the item is not consumed. See the API.

What is stored#

A placed model is two entities — a display for what you see, an interaction for what you can hit — both tagged in persistent data. Nothing is written to a database of ours, so a model survives a restart, moves with a world you copy, and does not need us to be running to be there.

If a pack stops declaring a model, everything already placed keeps standing; it simply has no art until the pack declares it again. /rp models lists what is around you and marks the orphans, and /rp purge removes those and only those — purging models a pack still defines would be a demolition command wearing a cleanup command's name.