The old RenderLivingEvent.Specials.Pre event (at least 1.12-1.14, haven't looked back further) used to pass its renderer. This allowed me to cancel and render my own nameplates using said renderer.
Now in 1.15 Specials is gone, and fortunately RenderNameplateEvent was added, but it doesn't pass the renderer so I can't use the same approach. I would want to do a lot of what renderName() does, but I would have no access to the EntityRendererManager it uses.
Is there any reason not to use my own renderer and manager? It rubs me the wrong way given how it used to be provided, presumably for purposes like mine, but I don't know. If not ill-advised, I'm happy to do a PR to add the renderer to RenderNameplateEvent to work more like its predecessor, and I guess the packedLight int while I'm at it.