Better Voxels: Path-Traced Voxel GI & Eclipse Shader

Better Voxels is an experimental continuation of the Rethinking Voxels shaderpack, re-working its voxel path-tracing core and adding a suite of hand-picked rendering modules that were previously scattered across separate projects. It tackles the visual gap between pure physical lighting and expressive, stylised presentation: no other pack offered a single, configurable platform where moving eclipse shadows, retro CRT scanlines, real-time ASCII output, and a fisheye bodycam perspective could coexist with full voxel global illumination. This fork merges those concepts under one roof, tuned for Iris and kept modular so you never have to swap shaders mid-session just to change a visual mood.

This shader is built for players and content creators who want cinematic light transport without sacrificing creative post-processing. If you have ever wanted to record footage with procedural water droplets on the lens while auto-exposure mimics a handheld camera, or if you enjoy the nostalgia of soft phosphor bloom and dancing scanlines, Better Voxels gives you those options alongside physically motivated indirect light. Modpack developers will appreciate that everything—from focal depth blur to the ASCII character grid—sits on its own slider or toggle, making it straightforward to ship a single shader with drastically different visual profiles.

While the code has been profiled and re-ordered for Iris, keeping all features active at once will ask a lot of your hardware. Path-traced voxel GI remains computationally heavy, and the ASCII / CRT passes add a further screen-space processing load. On integrated graphics or older laptop GPUs you may need to disable several modules to maintain a playable frame rate; on a modern mid-range to high-end dedicated GPU, the experience is stable but still sensitive to shadow distance and ray budgets. The project also strictly preserves the licensing chain—it is a fork of Rethinking Voxels, which itself derives from Complementary Shaders, and any heavy modifications should follow the project’s modding policy.

• Voxel Global Illumination: Advanced path-traced indirect light optimised for the Iris pipeline, producing coloured bounce light and contact-accurate shadows.
• Eclipse Mechanics: Persistent solar and lunar tracking that dynamically shifts light direction, sky colour, and shadow softness during eclipses.
• Camera Effects: Procedural water droplets on the lens and screen-space focal depth blur that responds to the player’s point of interest.
• Post-Processing Modes: Switchable CRT mode with retro scanlines and phosphor glow, full-viewport ASCII grid conversion, and a BodyCam fish-eye perspective with auto-exposure logic.
• Complete Modularity: Every effect can be adjusted or disabled individually through the in-game shader configuration menu—no forced bundled features.

Requirements: Iris 1.6 or newer and a dedicated GPU with solid OpenGL compute performance. Minecraft 1.20+ is recommended, though any version where the Rethinking Voxels base runs should work. The path-tracing pass scales with scene complexity and render distance; for full-feature use a mid-range or better GPU (e.g., an NVIDIA RTX 2060 / AMD RX 5600 XT or above) is advisable. The shader is provided under the Complimentary Agreement 1.3 and retains all original copyright notices from gri573’s Rethinking Voxels and EminGT’s Complementary Shaders.