
Photon Shaders
A gameplay-focused shader pack with a semi-realistic style
About
Community
- Join my discord server for questions, suggestions and development updates
- You can also donate if you would like to say thanks
Frequently asked questions
- "When will Photon be released for new Minecraft version?"
- Shader packs are generally not very dependent on MC versions; as long as Iris is available, Photon should just work.
Features
- Fully revamped sky, lighting and water
- Detailed clouds with several layers and many different cloud types
- Immersive weather system providing different skies each day
- Voxel-based colored lighting (enabled with Ultra profile, requires Iris)
- Screen-space reflections
- Volumetric fog
- Soft shadows with variable-size penumbras
- Detailed ambient occlusion (GTAO)
- Camera effects: bloom, depth of field, motion blur
- Much improved image quality with TAA, FXAA and CAS
- Advanced temporal upscaling (disabled by default) for low end devices
- Extensive settings menu allowing you to customize every aspect of the shader
- Full labPBR resource pack support
Compatibility
Shader loaders
- Iris (recommended)
- Iris is a modern shader loader with far better performance, mod compatibility and developer features than OptiFine
- Some features (Colored Lighting) will only work on Iris
- OptiFine
GPU vendors
- Nvidia
- AMD
- Intel
- NOT compatible with Apple GPUs (Metal) by default
- Disable SH Skylight and Colored Shadows
Mods
Showcase videos
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- Settings menu translations:
- NakiriRuri and OrzMiku (Chinese)
- Jmayk (Italian)
- Timtaran (Russian)
- Emin - Shadow bias method from Complementary Reimagined (fully fixes peter panning and light leaking underground!)
- DrDesten - Depth tolerance calculation for SSR (helps to prevent false reflections)
- Jessie - f0 and f82 values for labPBR hardcoded metals
- Sledgehammer Games - Bloom downsampling method used in Call of Duty Advanced Warfare (described here)
- http://momentsingraphics.de/ - Blue noise texture
- NASA Scientific Visualization Studio - Galaxy image
Versions
This is a small update fixing a few issues that were found in v1.2.
Hi everyone, Despite my extremely sporadic work schedule for this project, it's time for another update! I am very excited about this one - while the previous update mostly focused on technical changes, this one brings a lot more atmosphere to the game. ## Weather and Clouds - The previous daily weather system has been replaced with a much more dynamic system, which some people will remember from extremely old Photon versions. This provides much more natural weather variation which is also influenced by the biome you're in. - The weather affects the clouds, fog and even the waving plants. - The downside of this is that you can no longer adjust the weather per-day. - Cumulus congestus clouds may now appear alongside the regular cumulus clouds rather than replacing them. - I've adjusted a lot of the cloud shapes and lighting. Altostratus-like clouds will also appear now. - Reworked rainy weather. - Lightning flashes now illuminate the sky. - Added rainbows :) ## Crepuscular Rays - Added crepuscular rays through the clouds. - These are also controlled by the new weather system. ## Colored Lights Fog Scattering - When _Colored Lights_ is enabled, the fog will be illuminated by light sources. - I also made the voxel volume for the Colored Lights centered ahead of the player rather than on them, so you can see colored lights much further with no performance impact. ## Improved Indirect Lighting - SH Skylight is improved by using bent normals and enabled by default. - Added a new approximation for indirect subsurface scattering based on AO. - This makes shaded areas and dusk/dawn look much more natural. ## Miscellaneous - New fast fog approximation, which is used in reflections, behind translucents and when volumetric fog is disabled. This means that fog no longer disappears in these cases. - Updated water waves - I think they look much nicer now and the pattern is much less repetitive. - Updated the moon with a new textured look. - Improved the Pale Garden
- added Chinese translation by NakiriRuri and OrzMiku - added some modded blocks to block.properties - adjust TAA to reduce ghosting - adjust fog - enable water texture on underground water for improved visibility - hardcoded materials for 1.21 and 1.21.4 additions - improve cloud filtering - improve rough reflections - improve silver lining on clouds - increase sky vibrance, especially at sunset - multilayer reflections: water no longer loses its surface behind stained glass - new cloud types: cirrocumulus clouds, noctilucent clouds - new sky option: Galaxy (milky way in the night sky) - small plants are displaced close to the player - water wave height variation - many bug fixes and optimisations
Download
Download vv1.2aMinecraft: 1.19, 1.19.1, 1.19.2, 1.19.3, 1.19.4, 1.20, 1.20.1, 1.20.2, 1.20.3, 1.20.4, 1.20.5, 1.20.6, 1.21, 1.21.1, 1.21.2, 1.21.3, 1.21.4, 1.21.5, 1.21.6, 1.21.7, 1.21.8, 1.21.9, 1.21.10
Loaders: iris, optifine