Translucency

Translucency is a concept very closely related to transparency. Blocks, items, entities and other game elements said to be translucent allow for vision to pass through them partially, but not fully.

All translucent blocks use the rendertype_translucent core shader, with the exception of tripwire, which uses rendertype_tripwire.

Water cauldrons, despite containing water, render this water as completely opaque. While it was rendered translucent as expected in prior versions, this seems to be inconsistent and possibly hardware-dependent, and when it fully stopped is currently unknown. Its opacity is also a parity issue, as cauldron water appears translucent as expected in Bedrock Edition. This persists to the present day.^[1]

Similarly, while tripwire itself is translucent, the region of tripwire which connects to a tripwire hook is not. This causes the region of tripwire attached to the tripwire hook to appear much darker than the rest of it.^[2]

These visuals are also rendered with translucency:

• The outer body of slimes.
• Certain particles, like the swirls emitted from potion effects.
• Certain screen overlays like the nether portal transition effect and the powder snow freezing overlays.
• Water, while lava is not.
• The outer glow of beacon beams.