Description
Gallery
Changelog
Versions
Features
- Voxel Global Illumination. Path-traced bounce lighting, tuned to run on Iris.
- Nubis Extended clouds. A unique cloud technology based on Nubis 2017, Nubis Cubed, and other articles, featuring a refined spawning physics system. (BETA)
- Fully modular. Over 1700 sliders and 400 switches across 12 tabs. Every effect can be retuned or switched off in the shader menu.
- Per-biome atmosphere. 64 biomes, each with its own fog colour, light shaft colour and shaft strength. Borders crossfade. It can reach the sky too, if you want it to.
- Smooth Time Transition. Sunrise and sunset glide instead of stepping. Shadows, clouds, stars, the nebula and the aurora all run off the same eased clock, so nothing lags behind.
- Atmosphere and weather.
- 7 aurora palettes and 5 sunset palettes, or a random sunset each day.
- Volumetric fog, distant haze, cave fog and godrays.
- Seasons with autumn colours, rainbows, and No Rain Above Clouds.
- Better Thunder: the cloud deck drops under a storm, and lightning flashes inside the clouds.
- Distant Horizons and Voxy. Distant terrain gets the pack's fog, haze, seasons, lights, shadows and ambient occlusion.
- Effects tab. Low Health, Low Oxygen, Water Plunge, Exposure Spike, Screen Rain & Dirt, Lens Fogging, Light Halos, Heat Distortion, Samsung Space Zoom, Camera Motion and Smooth Beacon Ray. Each has its own settings page.
- Auto Exposure that answers to what is in frame, not to how bright the day is. Look at a lamp and the world around it drops away. Look at more lamps and it drops further. A bright afternoon is left alone.
- Realistic water, interactive ripples, waving foliage, POM, generated normals, coated textures, glowing ores, and a block outline that follows the texture instead of the box.
Nubis Extended Clouds
Volumetric clouds with a sky that behaves like weather. They are the default on every profile.
- Eight cloud types. Cumulus, stratocumulus, stratus, altocumulus, cirrocumulus, cirrus, cirrostratus, and a lone cumulonimbus with its anvil. By default the whole sky runs at once: a low deck and a high deck, each with its own regions of cloud, drifting at different speeds.
- Weather that moves. Highs and lows drift across the sky. Every night decides how cloudy the next day will be, and rain slowly closes the sky over.
- Clouds that grow from the air. Temperature, humidity and stability decide where cloud forms. Cumulus rises with the afternoon warmth and fades at sunset, and stratus lies low on humid mornings.
- Light.
- Multiple scattering and a silver lining toward the sun.
- Cloud shadows on the ground, and reflections in water.
- Beacon beams and lightning glowing inside the clouds.
- Tunable. Quality levels from Potato to High, and hundreds of settings on themed pages.
Post-Processing
Three pages of camera and film simulation. All of it stacks.
- BodyCam Mode. Fish-eye lens, edge distortion, and night vision that turns itself on when the scene goes dark.
- 2KS Mode. A camcorder look ported from the 2KS shaderpack with permission, with most of its original settings menu.
- Old Camera Post-Processing. Scanlines, phosphor bloom, screen curvature, tape distortion, chromatic aberration, tracking noise.
- ASCII Mode. The viewport redrawn as a live character grid.
- Color Correction.
- 16 tonemappers, including AgX with its looks, ACES, Gran Turismo, Hable, Lottes and PBR Neutral.
- White balance and three-way grading.
- Colour spaces up to Rec.2020.
- Night vision that drains colour from the dark.
- Filters (including City Night), cinematic bars, film grain, and a Fun tab of 13 joke effects.
Post Profiles
7 one-click looks, set from the top of the menu. They are separate from the quality profile, so how the pack looks and how hard it runs are two different choices.
Each one sets the tonemap, palette, contrast and post chain together.
Options
Eight quality profiles from Potato to Ultra Max. An Optimization tab of cost controls that ship neutral, so turning them up is your call and not the default. Settings pages for anything you want to take apart.
License & Credits
- License: Complementary License Agreement 1.6. This project is a fork of Rethinking Voxels (by gri573), which is based on Complementary Shaders / Complementary Development by EminGT. Original copyright notices and the terms of the license are strictly retained.
- Lead Developer: FastdropX
- Modding Policy: Out of respect for the project, please notify the developer or open a pull request before releasing heavy modifications.
- Credits:
- gri573 Rethinking Voxels Developer
- EminGT Complementary Shader Developer
- SixthSurge for the cumulus cloud shape, inspired by and ported from Photon, used with permission
- SonicallGameX for 2KS Mode, used with permission
- LoLip_p for BodyCam Mode
//EWZ
All Versions
+ Add Version
[1.8] Better Voxels 1.8
by _FastdropX_ on Oct 13, 2026
Download
New
Changed
Fixed
Removed
<details>
<summary>Spoiler</summary>
Finally... 1.8...
</details>
- Nubis Extended clouds (beta)**. Realistic volumetric clouds, now the default: 8 cloud types, drifting weather, clouds that grow from the air, cloud shadows and reflections in water. **THE TECHNOLOGY IS CURRENTLY IN BETA!!! ANY BUG REPORTS WOULD BE HELPFUL!!!**
- Second Cloud Layer. A second deck for Reimagined and Unbound clouds.
- Color Correction, rebuilt. 16 tonemappers, color grading, color spaces and Night Vision.
- Sunset Colours. 5 sunset palettes, or a random one each day.
- Distant Haze. Far terrain turns blue and fades into the horizon.
- Voxy support.
- Distant Horizons page. Settings for how distant terrain is drawn.
- Smooth Beacon Ray. The beacon beam rises into the sky instead of popping in.
- Better Thunder page. Lightning colour, and lightning inside the clouds.
- Low Oxygen. Drowning shows on screen.
- Custom Skybox. Resource pack skies are drawn properly.
- Biome Rain Color and Biome Water Particles.
- Custom Biomes Support. Fog colours for modded biomes.
- Always Realistic Moon. The HD moon photo is always on, for the Unbound moon.
- Autumn Variety. Trees turn different colours in autumn.
- City Night filter.
- Resource Pack Emission Light slider.
Changed
- Cinematic post profile reworked.
- Global Illumination is Subtle by default on Low to High+.
- Update Cone Direction during RT is on only in Ultra and UltraMax (better FPS near lava).
- Motion Blur and Depth of Field are off by default.
- Switching profiles no longer leaves settings from the previous one.
Fixed
- Modded light blocks and entities cast no light.
- Resource pack glowing textures were too bright.
- World Curvature hid Distant Horizons terrain.
- Dark leaves with the Better Leaves resource pack.
- Water showed through the edges of clouds seen from above.
- Voxy water bug.
Removed
- The old Color Correction page, Night Desaturation and Double Reimagined Clouds. All three are replaced by new features.
<details>
<summary>Spoiler</summary>
Finally... 1.8...
</details>
[1.7] Better Voxels 1.7
by _FastdropX_ on Oct 13, 2026
Download
## New
## Changed
## Fixed
- Tonemaps tab.** 11 curves, picked separately from the Color Correction mode: BSL, Complementary (Lottes), AgX, Photorealistic, Reinhard, Reinhard White Point, Filmic (Hejl), ACES, Uncharted 2 (Hable), PBR Neutral.
- 2KS Mode.** Camcorder post-processing ported from the 2KS shaderpack with permission, with most of its original settings. Sits next to BodyCam and works on all three Post-Processing pages.
- Auto Exposure, rewritten.** It now reacts to what is in frame instead of to the overall light level. Look at a lamp and the world around it darkens; look at more lamps and it darkens further; a bright afternoon is left alone. New controls: Highlight Response, Highlight Threshold, Centre Bias, Shadow and Highlight Weight, Metering Samples, and classic level-following on its own switch.
- Better Thunder.** The cloud deck drops while a storm lasts, and every strike lights it from inside. Clouds and ground flash off the same signal.
- No Rain Above Clouds.** Precipitation fades out as you climb through the lower cloud deck. Works with both cloud styles.
- Aurora colours.** 7 palettes: Oxygen, Deep Freeze, Emberlight, Neon, Acid, Spectrum, plus the original.
- Night Desaturation.** Colour drains out of dark parts of the image, measured per pixel, so a lit doorway keeps its colour while the field beside it goes pale.
- Nether biome colours.** Portals and lava take the colour of the Nether biome they are in. Crimson red, warped teal, soul valley blue, basalt ash. Off by default, with separate strength for each.
- Fun tab.** 13 joke effects, from wobbling every block in the world to turning them all into spheres.
- World Curvature** now has sliders instead of fixed steps.
## Changed
- Biome atmosphere reworked.** The 64 biome entries are colours, but they were being applied as multipliers, which cannot move a hue. Blue midday fog times a green taiga came back cyan, and warm biomes came back blue. They now steer the hue with brightness held. Average hue error went from 36° to 4° at midday and from 89° to 8° at sunset, with brightness moving 1.8% on average. Eight entries whose written colour did not match the biome were corrected: Windswept Forest, Flower Forest, Meadow, Cherry Grove, Mangrove Swamp, Wooded Badlands, Warm Ocean, Basalt Deltas.
- Apply to Sky** added to Biome Atmosphere. Off by default. The sky stays mostly its own colour.
- Night is darker** and daylight no longer blows out. Sun settings taken from v1.3.
- Global Illumination is off by default** on High+ and below.
- Underwater light shafts** are dimmer by default.
- Night vision** gain lowered from 5 to 3. It now engages when the scene gets dark, not only at night, so walking into a mine at noon turns it on.
- Cinematic and Particles** moved into Misc.
- High+ defaults: Anisotropic Filter 4, Aurora Colours Deep Freeze, Saturation 1.15, GI Samples 7, Night Nebula on, No Rain Above Clouds on, World Curvature altitude 1024.
## Fixed
- The aurora drifted in steps under Smooth Time Transition while the rest of the sky glided. It now runs on the same eased clock as the clouds, stars and nebula.
- Auto exposure barely did anything. Its target sat above the level scenes actually arrive at, so the result was clamped to the same value in every scene.
- Auto Night Vision never engaged on the Potato profile.
- Sneak-to-toggle night vision could not work: the shader read a uniform nothing ever created.
- Five smaller defects and two orphaned menu entries.
