Aetherial Shaders

A cinematic modern fantasy realism shaderpack for Minecraft Java Edition. Compatible with Iris (1.16+ recommended pipeline) and OptiFine (HD U G8 or newer). Written against the classic GLSL 120 shader dialect for maximum driver compatibility.

Minecraft, but with a high-end fantasy film treatment: soft golden-hour sunlight, dynamic shadows, volumetric fog and god rays, living water, glowing emissives and a filmic ACES grade — while keeping the blocky identity, readable nights and honest performance.

Installing

1. Install Iris (recommended, via the Iris/Fabric installer) or OptiFine.
2. Drop Aetherial-Shaders-v1.0.zip into your .minecraft/shaderpacks/ folder (or copy the aetherial-shaders folder itself — the loader accepts both).
3. In-game: Options → Video Settings → Shader Packs → Aetherial.
4. Pick a profile in Shader Pack Settings (gear icon): Low / Medium / High / Ultra.

Feature map

Feature	Where it lives
Golden-hour sunlight & day cycle colors	lib/sky.glsl (aetherialSunColor)
Dynamic PCF shadows (terrain, mobs, buildings)	shadow.*, lib/shadows.glsl
Volumetric god rays (shadow-map march)	program/composite.fsh
Volumetric cloud deck, stars, sunset gradients	lib/sky.glsl, gbuffers_skybasic.fsh
Water waves, refraction, SSR reflections, caustics	program/gbuffers_water.*, composite1.fsh
Rain-wet ground & puddle reflections	program/gbuffers_terrain.fsh
Emissive lava / torches / redstone / soul fire	block.properties + lib/lighting.glsl
SSAO for corners and caves	program/composite.fsh
Underwater blue fog, distortion, light shafts	composite/final (isEyeInWater)
Nether red fog + heat haze	world-1/ overrides
End purple void atmosphere	world1/ overrides
Bloom, auto exposure, ACES tonemap, grading, lens flare, vignette	composite2/3.fsh, program/final.fsh
Motion blur & depth of field (Ultra)	program/final.fsh

Profiles

• Low — 1024 shadow map, fast filtering, no SSAO/god rays/volumetric clouds, sky-only water reflections. Targets mid-range PCs at high framerates.
• Medium — 2048 shadows, god rays, volumetric clouds, ray-traced water.
• High — the intended look: 3072 shadows, soft PCF, full atmosphere.
• Ultra — 4096 shadows, 32-sample volumetrics, 32-step reflections, plus cinematic depth of field and motion blur.

Every individual effect can still be toggled per-option in the menu (bloom, DoF, motion blur, reflections, clouds, fog density, grading, exposure, waving foliage, puddles, lens flare, and more).

Tuning cheat-sheet

• Too dark at night / in caves → raise Minimum Light or Night Brightness.
• Shadow acne or peter-panning → bias lives in lib/shadows.glsl (bias and the normal-offset factor).
• Fog too thick → Fog Density slider; per-dimension multipliers are in program/composite.fsh.
• Bloom taste → threshold in composite2.fsh (smoothstep(1.6, 3.2, l)), intensity in the menu.
• Water color → waterTint in program/gbuffers_water.fsh.
• Golden-hour intensity → golden color in lib/sky.glsl.

Structure notes

• Root programs render the overworld; world-1/ (Nether) and world1/ (End) contain thin wrappers that re-include the shared program bodies from program/ with a dimension define (NETHER_DIM / END_DIM).
• Buffers: colortex0 HDR scene, colortex2 bloom, colortex3 encoded view-normal + reflectance mask (water = 1.0, puddles ≈ 0.35).
• Shadows sample shadowtex1 (opaque casters only) so light passes through water and glass, keeping underwater shafts bright.