A lightweight semi-realistic shader pack built for a high performance-to-quality ratio. (developed and tuned on an RX 6600 at 1440p).
- Real-time PCSS shadows with profile-scaled filtering, per-pixel distortion, and matching foliage motion in the camera and shadow passes
- Colored translucent shadows: sunlight through water turns blue with animated caustics
- Two half-resolution cloud modes: Blocky 3D - chunky vanilla-style box clouds with real height, per-face lighting and inter-cloud shadows (very cheap); and Volumetric raymarched clouds with self-shadowing, restrained silver linings, temporal jitter/history, wind drift, and high cirrus layers
- Cloud shadows on terrain, matching the sky overhead
- Half-resolution screen-space god rays (sun/moon, above and below water) with one frame-level source-occlusion probe
- SSR water reflections - terrain, trees, and builds mirrored on water; depth-aware (clear shallows, mirror depths) with sky-gradient fallback
- Procedural fluid water: Gerstner-style traveling waves, sea-state variation, rain ripples
- Unified atmospheric fog: fog is the sky gradient (aerial perspective), render-distance fade dissolves into it seamlessly. Dynamic mode pools fog near sea level and thins it with altitude, with morning mist at sunrise; density slider goes down to fully off
- Full weather system: bright diffuse overcast, dark slate thunderstorms, localized lightning flashes that light the cloud deck from within, emissive lightning bolts
- Procedural circular sun and phase-accurate circular moon
- Dynamic held-item lighting (torch in hand lights the world)
- Inverse-square block light: torches and lamps attenuate like real point lights (toggleable), with flame color at a real ~1900K blackbody
- Dark survival nights, warm Nether ambient (adjustable in-game)
- Rain puddles: connected pools with rain ripples, sky and SSR scene reflections, and sun glint; wet surfaces darken while it rains and dry out afterwards
- Nether portals glow and cast purple light from a downsampled, separably filtered mask
- Snow sparkle: view-dependent crystal glints on snowy ground
- Living flames: fire and campfires flicker with white-hot cores and swaying tips; soul fire burns cold blue
- Glowing blocks: glowstone, lanterns, froglights and friends glow through bloom; ores, amethyst and sculk glint in dark caves
- Night sky: procedural milky way band, shooting stars, and a green aurora on roughly one clear night in three
- Half-resolution SSAO contact shading with depth-aware silhouette reconstruction
- HDR pipeline: quarter-resolution soft-knee bloom, Solstice filmic tonemapping, directional FXAA, and dithering
- Full Nether and End support: dark violet End with drifting aurora ribbons, stars and fixed-angle shadows; dragon death rays and explosions glow through bloom; Nether gets biome-tinted fog, a drifting haze backdrop, ember glow on the horizon and heat shimmer over distant terrain
Four profiles: Low / Medium / High / Ultra (shader options screen), plus six option screens: Shadows, Sky & Clouds, Water, Visuals, Color & Tone, Nether & End, and an About page. Notable controls: Cloud Coverage, Cloud Speed, Blocky Cloud Height, SSR Quality, Shadow Filter Quality, Nether/End Brightness, Aurora Strength, and Fog Density.
- Iris 1.8 or newer (bundled with current Fabulously Optimized releases). OptiFine untested; Iris-exclusive uniforms (thunderStrength, lightningBoltPosition, hasSkylight) degrade gracefully if absent.
Shadows are the dominant cost - lower Shadow Resolution/Distance or Shadow Filter Quality first. Clouds, SSAO and light shafts use reduced-resolution buffers; volumetric clouds also reuse a clamped cloud-only history. SSR costs only near reflective water and its 16/24/40 step cap follows the selected profile. Disabled effects skip their composite programs.
v1.4 - Rebuilt the post-processing layout around reduced-resolution effects. Clouds, SSAO and light shafts now render at half resolution with depth-aware reconstruction; bloom uses quarter-resolution soft-knee filtering; portal light comes from a downsampled mask; and sun/moon visibility is measured once per frame. Volumetric clouds gained jittered, neighborhood-clamped temporal history and more controlled silver linings. SSR and PCSS now have profile-scaled quality tiers, shadow foliage matches visible foliage, FXAA is a proper directional path, and the filmic curve preserves cloud/snow highlights while gently separating near-black terrain without raising true black.
v1.3 - Reflections, volumetrics and glass. SSR rewritten as a screen-space march with perspective-correct depth: distant reflections resolve crisply, and the ray loop runs without matrix math (better quality, lower cost). Volumetric clouds use real scattering math now: dual-lobe Henyey-Greenstein phase, two-term Beer transmittance for luminous interiors, powder edges, darker bases - and they drift 4x slower with all noise octaves advecting together, so clouds stop morphing and move as one body. Stained glass throws vivid colored light and windows catch sky reflections and sun glints. Fixed Medium/High/Ultra profiles not selecting Volumetric cloud mode after Low had been used. New Cloud Quality step 32, used by Ultra.
v1.2 - Weather, glow and night sky. Rain puddles with sky reflections and wet-ground darkening (driven by the game's wetness value, so ground dries gradually after rain). Emissive blocks: two block classes, full glow for light sources and a subtler glint for ores, amethyst and sculk, both feeding the bloom pass. Night sky additions: milky way, shooting stars every few seconds, and an aurora that appears on about a third of clear nights (rolled per in-game day). Depth-based SSAO with a strength slider. All new effects have toggles; Low profile skips puddles and SSAO, Medium skips SSAO.
v1.1 - Rebuilt Blocky cloud mode as true 3D boxes (voxel-traced height, lit tops/shaded sides, inter-cloud shadows). Added a Blocky Cloud Height slider, an About screen, and extra option tooltips.
Second part of v1.1: proper Nether and End support. The pack used to break outside the overworld because the dimension folders were incomplete; every shader program now runs in all three dimensions. The End got a darker, moodier look with aurora ribbons in the sky, stars, and shadows from its fixed light angle. Dragon death rays and explosion flashes are pushed into HDR so bloom makes them glow. The Nether got biome-tinted fog that warms toward the lava below, a slow haze backdrop that matches the fog color at the horizon (no more flat fog wall), a faint ember glow, and distance-weighted heat shimmer. Lava now moves: slow molten swells (sharing the Wave Strength slider) and an emissive heat pulse that feeds the bloom, in every dimension. New Nether & End options screen: End Aurora toggle + strength slider, Nether Haze, Heat Shimmer; Lava Waves lives under Water.
d0mkaaa (Domantas)