Minecraft has a signature look with square lo-fi character models, trees, clouds, and more as the world is made of blocks. If you have been playing Minecraft for a long time, you may want to experiment with the game’s overall look. The game has a distinct design that cannot be found in other titles. However, that doesn’t mean you cannot try out more realistic graphics, great lighting, and better shadows that can be added using Minecraft shaders. Minecraft shader packs are similar to graphic mods that allow you to modify the look of any Minecraft world by adding fantastic skyboxes, oceans, grass, leaves, and more. Learn more about the best Minecraft shader packs you can try out right now and how to install Minecraft shaders using Optifine or Iris.
Best Minecraft shader packs
Minecraft shaders give a unique look to your Minecraft world, making it look like a brand-new game altogether. Here’s the list of 7 best Minecraft shader packs you need to check out:
Continuum Shaders
The Continuum shader pack for Minecraft offers realistic lighting effects and shadows, life-like clouds, and colour gradients across the skybox. With this pack, shadows in the game will adjust according to the Sun’s position. However, it should be noted that you would need a high-end gaming PC to run Continuum Shaders smoothly.
Download here: Continuum Shaders
SEUS
Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders or SEUS completely overhauls the Minecraft world. It brings soft natural lighting, procedurally generated clouds, and raindrops that add a glossy look to every surface they touch. The shader pack doesn’t offer much customisability, which can be great if you don’t want to tweak every single aspect and play the game at default settings.
Download here: SEUS
BSL Shaders
BSL shader pack offers warm lighting and realistic water without interfering with the block-filled environment of Minecraft. The shader brings a beautiful depth of field effects and clouds that makes the game look like a Minecraft sequel. You can also turn on World Curvature to enhance the effect of BSL Shaders.
Download here: BSL Shaders
Complementary Shaders
The Complementary Shader pack is based on BSL Shaders, and aims to be great at performance, compatibility, graphics, and gameplay. The Complementary shader pack offers a good experience on almost every PC with any GPU on the market. This shader pack is especially suitable for low-end PCs.
Download here: Complementary Shaders
Oceano Shaders
Oceano Shaders visually rework the water surfaces in Minecraft. The shader pack also tweaks the rest of the colour palette of Minecraft with bright colours and soft shades. Oceano gives a unique look to the Minecraft world that cannot be created by other shaders.
Download here: Oceano Shaders
Nostalgia Shaders
Nostalgia Shaders offer a subtle graphics overhaul for Minecraft. The lightweight shader pack is designed to emulate shaders from the early 2010s. Just like Complementary Shaders, Nostalgia is meant to work smoothly on most PCs.
Download here: Nostalgia Shaders
Sildur’s Vibrant Shaders
Sildur’s Vibrant Shaders gives a comprehensive makeover to Minecraft and comes with several customizability options. You can spend hours tweaking every single setting of the shader pack to get the perfect look for your Minecraft world. The shader pack also works well on a wide variety of PCs.
Download here: Sildur’s Vibrant Shaders
How to install shader packs in Minecraft
To install shader packs in Minecraft, you need to first install Iris or Optifine on your PC. Check out the easy step-by-step guide to install Minecraft shaders via Iris or Optifine.
How to install Minecraft shaders using Iris
- Run the download file and select the Minecraft version you have on your PC to begin the installation
- Download any shader pack mentioned above
- Place the download folder in this location: %appdata%\.minecraft\shaderpacks
- Open Minecraft launcher and select Iris and Sodium to play with new shaders
How to install Minecraft shaders using Optifine
- Download any shader pack from the list mentioned above
- Place the downloaded folder in the following location: %appdata%\.minecraft\shaderpacks
- Open Minecraft launcher and select Optifine to play with newly installed shaders
