Minecraft shaders. What is a Minecraft shader? Why is it? And for how long? Well, Minecraft has a lot of things in its favour: infinite replayability, massively varied gameplay and a constantly changing and improving online game. Where Minecraft falters in comparison to other modern games is its graphics. Fortunately, as with everything in Minecraft, the graphical fidelity can be tweaked to incredible effect with the help of mods called shaders.
First time here? Be sure to check out our homepage for news, reviews, features, and everything else you need to know about PC games.
From photorealistic lighting to uncanny motion blur, shaders are capable of bringing your Minecraft experience to life. Every shader has its own unique qualities, whether that’s injecting some serious style or providing a lag-free boost to Minecraft’s base visuals. So, in order to set you on your way to crystal-clear vistas we’ve put together a collection of the top Minecraft shaders out there.
If you’re looking for the original Minecraft shaders mod headhere – it’s great for adding some light sparkle to Mojang’s aesthetic, rather than turning the world neon or anything mad like that.
HOW TO INSTALL MINECRAFT SHADERS
Getting a shader or shader pack up and running on Minecraft is a simple enough process. Before you get started trying to install a shader pack though, you’ll want to download and install Forge and Optifine and GLSL Shaders Mod. Alternatively, you can download the original shaders mod here, which is regularly updated for Minecraft’s latest versions, although downloads for 1.9 and up won’t be compatible with Forge and Optifine.
Head to Forge’s download page and select the download for the version of Minecraft you’re running. Once downloaded, locate the file and run it, which should bring a install window up. Check it’s located your Minecraft folders and then click ‘Install client’. To check it’s working, run Minecraft and select Forge as your profile – this should give you a new screen with your mods and programs listed in the bottom left-hand corner.
Optifine will require roughly the same procedure, but after downloading you’ll have to locate the Minecraft folder yourself. To do so hit [Windows key]+ R and type %appdata%\.minecraft into the run prompt. Now just drag and drop OptiFine into your ‘mods’ folder.
Finally, it’s time to grab the GLSL Shaders Mod. Head to their page and download the correct version before once again dragging and dropping it into the ‘mods’ folder. Now you have everything you should need to run shaders. The install process in no different than the rest except you’ll want to place the shader packs into… you guessed it… ‘shaderpacks’ folder.
WAVING PLANTS SHADERS
Breathing a little more life into Minecraft in a much less in-your-face photogenic way is Waving Plants Shaders, a nature centric graphics mod that lends subtle animations to all things green. This shader has been made to be compatible with the major shader packs such as SEUS, making the final effect even more impressive. It’s not just grass that’s been given some motion either, this shader gives every piece of vanilla fauna – from lilies to nether warts – a visual boost.
SONIC ETHER’S UNBELIEVABLE SHADERS
The touchstone shader pack for anyone wanting to feel like they’ve entered an entirely different game. Named SEUS for short, this pack is a modification on another much-loved shader pack, and as such it’ll have your Minecraft world looking about as good as you can ever expect it to. Soft natural lighting, rain that adds a glossy sheen to every surface it touches, procedurally generated clouds and much more await you.
CONTINUUM SHADERS
An unofficial add-on to the already dazzling SEUS Shader Pack, this graphics overhaul is the modder’s equivalent of the Sistine Chapel. Upon installing this shader you’ll be greeted with photo-realistic lighting effects: colour gradients across the sky box, true-to-life clouds, and shadows that adjust in shape and angle with the sun’s position. Everything here is top-notch. Unfortunately, such results come with the caveat of needing a mighty rig, but when visual fidelity like this is on the line it’s worth it. There’s a lite version available as well if you consider upgrading your PC for the sake of running a Minecraft shader a little excessive. Wuss.
KUDA SHADER
The KUDA shader makes a number of notable improvements to natural lighting in Minecraft, but this shader’s pièce de résistance is its gloriously enhanced sun rays. Resembling those benevolent beams of light you only seem to get at the least sociable hours of daylight, KUDA shader turns any rural scene into a masterpiece. There’s an impressive depth of field effect too, making this a solid shader for Minecraft artwork and screengrabs.
SUPER SHADERS
Light yellow tones, a subtle depth of field effect and pristinely rendered water make Super Shaders an ideal graphics mod for lending Minecraft a serene and idyllic atmosphere. It comes with some of the most realistic clouds and lighting available too, which is fantastic for capturing your creations at their very best.
LAGLESS SHADERS
Experimenting, tinkering and modding like the mad scientists we are comes with the cost of severely reduce performance – not every budding Minecraft engineer has a computer rig capable of dealing with the demands of high-fidelity visuals. Thankfully, some clever so-and-so madelagless shaders, giving everyone a taste of jaw-dropping visuals with no framerate drops to speak of.
SUMMER SUNSET
Few things compare to the warming glow of a summer sunset. That’s why this Minecraft modder decided to make a shader capable of bestowing all of those feelings of nostalgia and carefree-living upon your Minecraft world. Perfect for getting you through a dark and gloomy January afternoon or convincing yourself you’ve spent time outside on a hot June day.
NAELEGO’S CEL SHADERS
Add some crisp, cartoony visuals to proceedings with this Borderlands-inspired, cel-shaded look. This expertly crafted shader introduces bold colours, crisp outlines and solid shadows in order to emulate the look of a classic comic or cartoon.
MRMEEPZ’ SHADER PACK
Specially made for low-end setups, this humble shader gives lighting, effects and animations a dramatic boost with little to no toll on how well the game will run for you. Staggeringly, the MrMeepz’ Shaders packstill manages to include all the features of its performance-draining counterparts, such as water reflections, natural shadows and hosts of animations.
ACID SHADERS
Flawless visuals and breathtaking sunsets are one thing, but if you want to make your Minecraft session a little psychedelic there are few shaders as effective as this aptly named mind-bender. Looking towards the horizon will cause everything in view to twist and distort, folding the world in on itself and falling away in a single motion – it’s stomach-churning stuff. Load up a horror map with this shader turned on and you’re all set for a Minecraftian nightmare.
RUDOPLAYS SHADERS
Every shader has its best feature, this one has lots of them. Arresting sunsets, swaying foliage and vibrant colours are just some of the additions that make RudoPlays’ pack so great. This shader rests somewhere between photorealistic and classic Minecraft, making it an ideal bolt-on for anyone looking to add an aesthetic kick to the vanilla game.
ZIIPZAAP’S SHADER PACK
Sure, Ziipzaap’s Shader pack provides a hearty boost to Minecraft’s general lighting, but it’s the quality of the reflections that have been added to water which make this shader stand out. Our recommendation: find a large body of water, sit back and bask in the glory of those pristine reflections until the sun sets and it’s time to return to the safety of your hut.
HEXAGON’S NIGHT OWL SHADER PACK
Survival mode places a great amount of emphasis on surviving the night, which means attempting to adequately light a pitch-black world while defending yourself. This useful shader lights the night up with a convincing moonlight glow, making slaying mobs and exploring your surroundings considerably easier in early game.
THE WAVE
The Wave is another hypnotic shader that’ll give VR a run for its money where motion sickness is concerned. Stirring your vision as much as it stirs your stomach, The Wave makes the world around you roll about like… well… waves. It’s off-putting, nauseating, but totally awesome, especially when the sun’s setting.
That’s it – Minecraft shaders aplenty. If you’ve found any more that you think belong in the list then let us know in the comments.
Real-time lighting effects are a highlight of high-fidelity games like Battlefield V and Metro Exodus, but now they’re also available in the chunky world of Minecraft. A modder has created a ray tracing shader for use in the classic building game.
Okay, so it’s not ray tracing, exactly – technically, the rendering method modder Sonic Ether uses to create real-time global illumination in Minecraft is called path tracing. The difference is that path tracing uses rays that bounce many times throughout a scene, but the effect is similar to that of ray tracing: gorgeously-lit and shadowed scenes, even in something as simple-looking as Minecraft.
An artist who goes by @notglacier spotted the shader and posted a couple short videos of how it looks in game. The results are pretty astonishing: beautiful beams of sunlight angle through a glass ceiling onto a shiny reflective floor, and a torch gives off a realistic warm glow in the second. You almost forget that you’re looking at Minecraft – until he plunks down a switch on the wall, and you remember the original, pixel-texture graphics. In any case, it’s impressive work.
If you’d like to try it out yourself, you can download Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders (SEUS) Renewed from his website, which is here. It’s currently in version 1.0.0, and it’s a small download of just 6.74 MB.
You can also support Sonic Ether on Patreon, and a monthly pledge will grant access to his Discord server, with higher tiers available if you’d like to try out experimental development builds. He says his goal is to push Minecraft’s visuals “to the limit,” and it seems he’s done just that.
Splatoon 2 is the best-selling physical Nintendo Switch game in Japan.
The Nintendo Switch is undoubtedly a hit compared to Nintendo’s previous console the Wii U. While the console-handheld hybrid still has a long way to go before it can reach the same sales numbers as the Wii, however, it’s nice to see Nintendo back in the limelight after what felt like years of disappointment in the console space.
When comparing the best-selling games on Switch across every region, Japan is an interesting place to look at as the gaming culture in Nintendo’s country of origin is widely unique compared to most if not all western countries. Japan is a very on-the-go country so devices like the Switch and PS Vita are great for people who are running around every day.
Famitsu recently revealed the top 20 best-selling physical Nintendo Switch games in Japan and most of the games aren’t all too surprising, with the exception of a few outliers. You can check out the full list below alongside sales numbers:
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – 1,244,404
Super Mario Party – 950,068
Kirby Star Allies – 695,303
Minecraft – 651,275
New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – 465,742
1-2-Switch – 449,437
Arms – 425,881
Mario Tennis Aces – 400,018
Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum ‘n’ Fun! – 306,250
Pokken Tournament DX – 301,429
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate – 254,017
Dragon Quest Builders 2 – 249,889
Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 1 – 240,926
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze – 227,296
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – 221,234
Although Splatoon 2 seems like a game most people genuinely love, it’s quite surprising seeing it take the top spot over in Japan, beating out both Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s likely the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will inevitably take the top spot as that game is more recent and will see a bunch of DLC added into the game, like Joker from Persona 5, before the end of 2019.
The Nintendo Switch just celebrated its 2-year anniversary on March 3. What are some of your favorite titles on the device and what are you looking forward to most in 2019?
DualShockers recently talked with Hypixel Studio’s Chris Thursten about Hytale, discussing community mod support, post-launch plans, and more.
This year, Hypixel Studios’ debut game Hytale will be entering its first beta phase and preparing for a full release soon after. The game, which was announced in 2018 by the newly-formed company, is a fresh and exciting take on the existing blockgame genre; something that the team behind the game have incredible origins working on.
DualShockers recently talked with Chris Thursten – the Publishing Lead for Hypixel Studios. Chris talked to us about post-launch plans, community modding support, the team’s Minecraft origins, and much more. Here is our full interview:
Ben: Hytale is your first full game ever, and it seems you all are jumping into the deep end with it. Was there any doubt that you’d be going in the direction of what you were familiar with – e.g. Hypixel and Minecraft?
Chris Thursten: Yes. We spent a considerable amount of time not wanting to go in that direction, but we were naturally pulled towards it. Our team has a lot of experience in the blockgame genre, and it made sense for us to build on what we’d done before.
B: Riot Games are direct investors in the project – can you tell us about how that came to fruition?
CT: We approached Riot Games looking for advice, because they’ve got direct experience of building a professional development studio with modding community roots. We got on well, and that eventually led to Riot making an investment in Hypixel Studios.
B: Your studio runs the largest Minecraft server on the planet, and arguably the most diverse in terms of content. On that topic, what kind of support will Hytalehave for people who want to create huge server networks? Will there be any tools that you wish were in Minecraft for Hypixel to use that you’re bringing to the game?
CT: We’re planning to support people who want to create and run large server networks as well as anybody who wants to set up a server for their friends. Our server browser makes it easy for players to find, filter and rate community servers, and we’re investing in technology that’ll make it easy to jump into a server, or even adventure mode, straight from your friends list.
B: Are you planning to make community mod support a large part of the game, or are you just throwing the tools out there?
“HytaleModel Maker is the tool we’re using to create the game ourselves…It didn’t make sense for us to say ‘to mod the game you’ll have to learn a professional modeling package.’”
CT: We’ll be providing a huge amount of baseline content with Hytale, but we plan on giving the community lots of tools to find and play modded content too. We’re really looking forward to seeing what people do with the platform we provide.
B: Interestingly, Hytale is shipping with modeling and animation tools. Is there anything that prompted you to make this decision specifically? Are you excited about what your talented players could do with tools like that?
CT: HytaleModel Maker is the tool we’re using to create the game ourselves – it’s designed to make it as easy as possible to create and customize assets and load them into the game. We’ve put a lot of work into it, so it made sense to share it with the community too. It didn’t make sense for us to say ‘to mod the game you’ll have to learn a professional modeling package.
B: Do you plan on incorporating interesting but hidden lore into Hytale’s world and main modes?
CT: Yes. Exploration and discovery is a big part of adventure mode, and players who venture off the beaten track will have the opportunity to find secrets that others might miss.
“It makes sense that people will make the comparison, but blockgames are a genre and we believe there’s plenty of space for something new.”
B: You’re planning on adding minigames to feed the hunger of Hypixel fans who play the game – can you tell us more about these minigames?
CT: We’ve got a lot of experience building minigames and all of that is being invested into Hytale. We’re currently experimenting with a prototype variation of The Pit, a minigame that has developed a fun meta on the Hypixel server.
B: Do you think Hytale being compared to Minecraft constantly is a natural way of judging the game? How far from your Minecraft origins are you planning to stray with Hytale?
CT: It makes sense that people will make the comparison, but blockgames are a genre and we believe there’s plenty of space for something new. Hytale is its own game, and over time we expect that the comparison will be made less and less. We’ve got a huge amount of respect for Minecraft, Mojang and Microsoft – there’s definitely space for both to coexist!
B: How regularly will you guys be updating Hytale post-launch and does the team already have an idea of what they want to do with the game after release?
CT: We’ll be providing lots of support for the game after release. We’ll discuss more details about this further down the road!
B: How easy are you making the in-game scripting tools to use? Are you targeting advanced programmers and modellers, or are you wanting to create a system for beginners to turn into more advanced users?
CT: We’re targeting the higher end of modding – we know how good community mods can be. That said, difficulty really just depends on how ambitious your mod is – simpler mods will naturally be easier to make.
B: How do you plan on making Hytale appealing to YouTubers, streamers, and other content creators?
CT: We’re providing in-game cinematic tools to allow for advanced machinima creation, and we’re even letting players watch videos together in-game. It’s important to us that we support the needs of YouTubers, streamers and other content creators.
Minecraft and Undertale cross paths in a fan-created video, where Steve falls into Mt. Ebott recreating the intro of the low-fi indie game.
Both Minecraft and low-fi indie adventure Undertale with games like Fortnite and Deltarune stealing their spotlight. But creators are still working on making some cool fan projects — even if it means merging the two unlikely franchises together. A newly-created video focuses on just that, offering up the intro of the game in a new light.
Posted by Redditor u/Dodu-, the video seems innocuous enough. The 25-second video starts with Minecraft protagonist Steve climbing a gigantic mountain. Following the ascent, Steve falls through a crevice in the middle of the mountain, hitting a pitch-black section. Tiny, yellow flowers greet the player before he turns to a purple sheep.
You can catch the full video below:
Make no mistake–work was put into this. While there are naturally-developed caverns, caves, and sinkholes in Minecraft, Dodu explained that he had to blast this section out using TNT.
Now what does this have to do with Undertale — let me step in and deconstruct that for you.
For everyone who has never played the RPG Maker title that struck internet fame, each game begins with the same intro — following a war that broke out between Monsters and Humans. Despite coming out victorious and sealing the Monsters underground, in the year 201X humans have been falling through a hole at the top of Mt. Ebott. Those who manage to fall through that hole are never seen again.
You, as the game’s protagonist, trip and fall into Mt. Ebott, starting Undertale‘s adventure.
The game opens up to a quick dialogue section — you are introduced to Flowey, the seemingly innocent flower-like creature that “welcomes” you to the game. That is, before purple-clad goat mom (Toriel) drives the vindictive flower away and whisks you to her home.
So there you have it–Steve climbs the mountain, falls to the bottom, is greeted by flowers, and has his first encounter with Toriel.
Minecraft is currently available on quite literally everything — whether it be your Nintendo Switch, tvOS, or toaster. Meanwhile, Undertale is available for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Vita. Oh, and Minecraft is purchasable on Amazon if you are interested and haven’t picked it up yet.
Parisian producer Le Dom returns to his own label Paradoxe Club with a new EP, Schism.
The release is described by the label as “an operation of musical Minecraft” and collects four crushing club compositions that feature “the full magnetic power” of the producer’s “abrasive rhythmic constructions”. Listen to a new track, ‘13 Layers Of Stone’, below.
Schism drops on April 5 and is available to pre-order now. Check out the Weirdcore-designed cover art and tracklist below.
