MCL Shader

A shader pack built on one rule: there is one correct picture. Exposure, fog, saturation and bloom are identical in every profile - how powerful your GPU is has nothing to do with how a midday sky should look. The profile only decides what that picture costs.

What it does

Light & shadow

• Contact-hardening shadows (PCSS): sharp at the trunk, soft further away - the sun is a disc, not a point
• Warm direct light against cool shade - the difference is what gives the world volume
• HDR float buffers: fire, lava and the sun overshoot into the filmic curve instead of clipping to flat white

Firelight

• A torch is a flame, not a grey lamp: warm tint, inverse-square falloff, bright core
• Held light actually lights the world - vanilla leaves a cave just as dark with a torch as without one
• Emissive blocks glow by themselves: lava, glowstone, sea lanterns, magma, campfires, lanterns

Sky

• Scattering instead of a flat fill: deeper blue overhead, pale band at the horizon
• Stars of varying size and colour, the Milky Way, auroras on clear deep nights
• A real End sky - cold violet dust with stars showing through, instead of vanilla's black smear

Clouds

• Ray-marched volumetric clouds: light travels through an actual layer of vapour, not a slab of rectangles
• Cover ranges from scattered wisps to a solid blanket; rain thickens the layer on its own

Water

• Waves, caustics, screen-space reflections, refraction, adjustable clarity
• Underwater: wavelength-dependent absorption - red dies in the first few metres, blue carries furthest, and that is what makes depth feel deep
• Surface wobble at the boundary between water and eye

Weather

• Transparent rain that takes its colour from the haze, not the sky, so streaks stay part of the frame
• Snow that drifts sideways as it falls instead of dropping in columns
• Wet surfaces darken and pick up a narrow sky reflection

Space & frame

• SSAO, volumetric light shafts, distance fog, aerial perspective
• Filmic tonemapping, bloom thresholded above full sunlight, vignette, sharpening, FXAA

Profiles