Shader of Stars

Shader of Stars is a lightweight, realistic shader pack built from the ground up around one rule: Visual Quality per FPS > Visual Quality > Feature Count. It delivers volumetric clouds, realistic ocean waves, celestial night skies, and atmospheric lighting at 60–110+ FPS on integrated GPUs and laptops—with zero ray tracing and zero blurry half-resolution cloud upscaling.

THIS SHADERPACK IS CURRENTLY IN EARLY DEVELOPMENT; EXPECT BUGS OR SO.

Frequently asked questions

1. "When will Shader of Stars be updated for a new Minecraft version?"
   • Shader packs are largely independent of Minecraft updates; as long as Iris (or OptiFine) is available for that version (1.18 – 26.3+), Shader of Stars will work right out of the box.
2. "Which profile should I pick on a laptop or integrated GPU?"
   • Start with iGPU Fast or Balanced at 100% render quality. Both keep crisp native pixel clarity without looking broken or blurry, and 900p (1600×900) or half-Retina scaling on macOS gives the best balance of sharpness and high FPS.
3. "Can I modify, reupload, or use this shader in a modpack?"
   • Shader of Stars is All Rights Reserved—edits, forks, code extraction, and third-party reuploads are not permitted without written permission from Starknight_Z. Official Modrinth modpacks may include unmodified releases directly via Modrinth's dependency system.

Features

• 100% Native-Resolution Volumetric Clouds with 3 selectable styles (Photon Cumulus, Photon Multi-Layer Sky with altocumulus & cirrus decks, and Classic Legacy backup)
• Sky-vs-Terrain Split TAA + CAS keeping moving clouds smooth while preserving sharp terrain and leaf silhouettes
• Revamped Atmosphere & Celestial Nights featuring natural glare-free daytime exposure, ozone sunsets, multi-tier twinkling stars, Milky Way dust rifts, Aurora Borealis curtains, and shooting stars
• Post-Rain Analytical Double Rainbows (42° primary + 51° secondary arc with zero GPU cost in dry weather)
• Realistic Seascape Water & Underwater Optics with Stokes-Gerstner waves, connected wave-strip caustics, sun-aligned underwater god rays, shoreline foam, and a Classic Legacy water toggle
• Dynamic Rain & Storm Weather with wind-slanted rain streaks, concentric puddle/lake ripples, wet surface darkening, and storm mist
• Forest Canopy God Rays & Leak-Free Soft Shadows with concave corner/cave light-leak prevention and stained-glass colored shadows (Balanced+)
• Integrated PBR Materials & Reflections including screen-space reflections, world + handheld reflections on precious metal/gem blocks (Emerald, Diamond, Iron, Gold, Copper), and zero-FPS-cost glowing ore veins
• Custom Nether & End Dimensions featuring 3D-anchored volcanic Nether fog, swirling 3D parallax Nether portals, Ethereal Eclipse End sky (Vivid Nebula option), Hollow Sun black-hole lighting, 3D Cosmic Abyss End portals, and Astral Mirror obsidian in The End
• 4 Tuned Performance Profiles (iGPU Fast, Balanced, High, Cinema) plus an extensive Iris settings menu with Quick Feature Toggles

Performance Benchmarks

Tested in-game on Intel Iris Xe Graphics (Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro, 1600×900 at 100% internal render resolution with Sodium + Iris):

• Overworld (iGPU Fast / Balanced): 75–90+ FPS (86 FPS baseline; 60+ FPS sustained in heavy weather/cloud scenes)
• The Nether: 95–105+ FPS (98 FPS baseline via shadowless 3D volcanic lighting)
• Desktop GPUs & AMD Radeon 780M / 890M / Apple M-Series: 80–140+ FPS depending on resolution and render distance

Compatibility

Shader loaders

• Iris (recommended)
  • Best performance and mod compatibility when paired with Sodium on Fabric / NeoForge (or Embeddium + Oculus on Forge)
  • Required for the full categorized Shader Pack Settings UI and Quick Feature Toggles
• OptiFine

GPU vendors

• Intel (Iris Xe, Intel Arc iGPUs & dGPUs, UHD)
• AMD (Radeon 680M / 780M / 890M, Ryzen AI iGPUs, Radeon RX)
• Nvidia (GeForce GTX / RTX)
• Apple Silicon (M1 / M2 / M3 / M4 via OpenGL 330 compatibility — enable "Reduce Resolution on macOS" in Video Settings for best Retina FPS)

Acknowledgments

• SixthSurge (Photon Shaders) — Artistic inspiration for natural gaseous cloud layering and sky aesthetics
• Andrew Schneider & Nathan Vos (Guerrilla Games — Nubis) — Volumetric Perlin-Worley cloud profiling literature
• Magnus Wrenninge ( Oz: The Great and Powerful)** — Multi-octave volumetric scattering approximation
• Sébastien Hillaire — Physically based sky and aerial perspective literature
• Jorge Jimenez (Activision / Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare) — Dual-filter bloom downsampling and Interleaved Gradient Noise (IGN)
• AMD GPUOpen (FidelityFX CAS) — Contrast Adaptive Sharpening reference math
• Krzysztof Narkowicz & Matt Taylor — ACES fitted filmic tonemapping curve

Disclosures

• AI Usage Disclosure: Developed and directed by Starknight_Z with generative AI assistance used for GLSL code implementation, optimization, validation tooling, and documentation drafting. Every visual feature, artistic direction, hardware benchmark, and performance target was human-directed and tested in-game on target integrated GPU hardware.
• License: Copyright (c) 2026 Starknight_Z. All Rights Reserved.