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

Profile	For
Fast	Integrated graphics and older cards - no SSAO, reflections, refraction or bloom
Balanced	The default. Everything on at sane sample counts
Fancy	Higher step and sample counts on clouds, reflections, shadows and volumetrics

Settings

Around 50 sliders, grouped into Light & shadow, Firelight, Sky, Clouds, Water, Wind, Rain & snow, Space and Frame. Every one has an in-menu explanation of what it actually changes.

Options -> Video Settings -> Shaders -> Shader Pack Settings

Menus are translated into English and Ukrainian.

Requirements

• Iris (or OptiFine - the pack is in the OptiFine shader format)
• GLSL 120, so it runs on old hardware too
• Nether and End have their own shader programs

Installation

1. Install Iris (or OptiFine)
2. Drop the .zip into .minecraft/shaderpacks
3. Options -> Video Settings -> Shaders -> select MCL Shader

=== TODO BEFORE PUBLISHING ===

• Screenshots: on Modrinth they matter more than the text. At minimum day, night, rain and underwater.
• Game versions and loaders on the version tab (the pack itself is version agnostic, but list what you actually tested).
• License, and a Credits section if any borrowed code is in there.
• Categories/tags: Fantasy or Realistic, Atmosphere, Cartoon/Vanilla-like - whichever fits, plus Iris / OptiFine under compatibility.