Toggling Block Entity Animations and Render Options in Better Block Entities

guide

Better Block Entities (BBE) gives you control over how a range of block entities are optimized and animated, all handled through its settings interface rather than any crafting recipe. The options below cover chests, shulker boxes, bells, decorated pots, banners, and several other blocks, letting you switch optimizations and animations on or off individually.

The Master Switch

At the top level, the tooltip option turns BBE and every optimization it provides on or off in one move. If you want to compare vanilla behaviour against the mod's handling, or you suspect a specific block is misbehaving, this is the first thing to check.

Shading Method

A shading setting lets you pick how optimized block entities are lit. Sodium applies ambient occlusion and lightmaps per corner rather than per face, which can look better, but it may produce a noticeable difference while a block entity is switching between vanilla and Sodium rendering. Choose the method that suits your visual preference.

Per-Block Optimizations

Each supported block has its own optimization toggle. Turn any of these off if you want that block to fall back to default handling:

Optimize Chest — chest optimizations on or off
Optimize Shulker Box — shulker box optimizations on or off
Optimize Decorated Pot — decorated pot optimizations on or off
Optimize Banner — banner optimizations on or off
Optimize Bell — bell optimizations on or off
Optimize Bed — bed optimizations on or off
Optimize Campfire — campfire optimizations on or off
Optimize Lectern — lectern optimizations on or off
Optimize Sign — sign optimizations on or off

Per-Block Animations

Separate from optimization, you can control whether certain blocks animate at all:

Animate Chest — chest animations on or off
Animate Shulker Box — shulker box animations on or off
Animate Bell — bell animations on or off
Animate Decorated Pot — decorated pot animations on or off

Disabling an animation keeps the block static, which can help performance or simply match a preferred look.

Banners get two dedicated settings. One decides which render pass banners use: Fast renders them as cutout, while Fancy renders them as translucent. The other rotates the banner canvas or flag to a preset position, so you can fix its orientation without placing it again.

Extra Render Passes

The Extra Render Passes option controls how many additional passes a block entity stays in its animating state after the animation has already finished. Raising this keeps the animation visible for longer; lowering it cuts the effect short.

Chest Textures

A Christmas textures toggle lets you switch seasonal chest textures on or off, independent of the other chest settings.

Sign Text Options

Signs have their own group of controls:

Sign Text Render Distance — the distance in blocks at which sign text begins to render
Sign Text Backface Culling — skips drawing sign text on the side you cannot see
Sign Text Rendering — turns sign text rendering on or off entirely

Update Scheduler

An update scheduler setting lets you choose between two modes. Smart updates block entities based on several factors, including visibility, and performs no direct updates. Fast updates immediately.

Working With Hotkeys

Some of these actions can also be bound to keys. Where a hotkey applies, use the corresponding hotkey, which you set in the controls menu. No key is assigned by default, so pick one that does not conflict with your other bindings.

Practical Tips

Disable the master tooltip switch first when troubleshooting, then re-enable individual optimizations to isolate the cause.
Turn off animations for blocks you rarely watch, such as distant bells or pots, to reduce visual work.
Adjust Sign Text Render Distance downward on busy servers to limit how much text is drawn.
If banner shading looks wrong, try switching between Fast and Fancy render passes.