Lumina Shader - Lite

# 🚑 Lumina Shader Lite v1.2.9 — Emergency Hotfix

A focused update that fixes a compilation error preventing **Lumina Lite from loading in Minecraft 26.3**.

## 🛠️ Fixed

• Fixed the line shader error: Invalid call of undeclared identifier 'ftransform'.
• Applied the correction across the **Overworld, Nether, and End**.

## 🎨 Visuals & Settings

• Preserved all quality profiles, visual effects, and **Temporal Antialiasing (TAA)** behavior.

## 🧪 Validation

• Added regression coverage for the line shader across **all 7 quality profiles and 3 dimensions**.
• 21 automated tests passed.**
• Distribution ZIP verification passed.
• Successful loading in **Minecraft 26.3** confirmed through an in-game test by the author.

💙 Thank you for reporting issues and helping improve Lumina Lite! If you experienced this loading error, please update to **v1.2.9**.

# 🚀 Lumina Shader Lite v1.2.8-rc.2 — Compatibility & Shadow Stability

This release candidate focuses on expanding Minecraft compatibility, strengthening shadow rendering, and preventing mathematical errors across demanding visual effects. The result is a safer, cleaner, and more reliable foundation for the upcoming stable release. ✨

## 🌍 Compatibility & Stability

• 🧩 Improved version-dependent conditions for **Minecraft 1.16.5 through 26.3**.
• 🧱 Corrected identifiers for blocks, cauldrons, vegetation, and boats across different Minecraft versions.
• 📐 Improved line-rendering compatibility.
• 🔍 Strengthened anisotropic-filtering safeguards.
• 🌌 Fixed calculations that could produce invalid values in certain End effects.
• 🌿 Removed interference between biome transitions, improving environmental consistency.

## 🌑 Five Shadow-Related Fixes

Shadow rendering received five focused stability and accuracy improvements:

• ☁️ Unified the depth calculation used by terrain shadows, cloud shadows, and volumetric light rays.
• 🌿 Fixed foliage-shadow displacement when the Sun is positioned directly overhead.
• 🌤️ Corrected cloud-shadow projection when sunlight arrives at an inclined angle.
• ✨ Prevented invalid light-ray calculations at extremely low frame rates.
• 🛡️ Prevented division by zero when no valid volumetric samples are available.

These corrections provide more consistent shadows throughout the day while protecting the shader from rare numerical errors.

## 🧪 Stronger Validation

• ✅ Added new automated regression tests.
• 🖥️ Added shader compilation and linking checks to GitHub Actions.
• 📚 Added dedicated compatibility documentation.
• 📦 Prepared and verified the distribution ZIPs for **rc.1** and **rc.2**.
• 🔎 Expanded validation across version-dependent and optional shader paths.

## 📊 Final Validation Results

• 20 automated tests passed**
• 5,628 shader compilation and linking combinations validated**
• 0 compilation errors**
• 0 linking errors**

## 🚧 Release Status

• Lumina Shader Lite v1.2.8-rc.2** is now prepared and available on the luminalitedev branch for final visual testing.

This release candidate brings Lumina Lite closer to complete Minecraft 26.3 support while preserving its lightweight design, broad version compatibility, and performance-focused identity. 🚀💙

# 🚀 Lumina Shader Lite v1.2.7 — Performance Unleashed

• Lumina Shader Lite is now faster, cleaner, and more efficient than ever.** ⚡

This major performance-focused update completely reworks every quality profile, significantly reduces unnecessary GPU work, and improves the experience on integrated and low-end graphics—while preserving the visual identity of Lumina Lite.

Internal testing showed an impressive **28–30% increase in FPS**, depending on the hardware, profile, and scene. 📈

## ⚡ Massive Performance Improvements

• Completely optimized all **seven performance profiles**, from Potato to Ultra.
• Reduced the cost of shadows, reflections, SSAO, bloom, water, clouds, and entity shadows.
• Prevented unused reflection and post-processing passes from running on lower profiles.
• Disabled inactive Temporal Anti-Aliasing programs when they are not required.
• Reduced low-detail bloom filtering from **49 to 25 samples** per active tile.
• Reduced low-detail procedural water normals from **four texture reads to two**.
• Improved shader activation times on **Low, Very Low, and Potato**.
• Significantly improved performance on integrated graphics and low-end GPUs.

## 🎚️ Completely Rebalanced Profiles

Every profile now follows a clear and consistent quality ladder:

🥔 **Potato** → Maximum performance
⚡ **Very Low** → Lightweight visuals
🚀 **Low** → Best performance-quality balance
🎮 **Medium** → Improved effects and detail
✨ **High** → Higher shadows and visual quality
💎 **Very High** → Advanced effects
🌟 **Ultra** → Maximum visual quality

• Low is now the default profile**, providing smoother performance, lower GPU usage, and a better experience immediately after installing the shader.

The inherited **Complementary profile has been removed**, making the profile selector cleaner and preventing confusing or incorrect default settings.

## 🌕 New Configurable Moon Halo

The Minecraft night sky receives a beautiful new atmospheric detail:

• Added a soft procedural halo around the Moon.
• Fully configurable intensity.
• Automatically reacts to rain, clouds, and lunar phases.
• Appears naturally in eligible sky and water reflections.
• Uses no additional textures or expensive volumetric effects.
• When disabled, its code is completely excluded from compilation.

The result is a more cinematic and immersive night sky without sacrificing Lumina Lite’s lightweight design. 🌌

## 🌊 Water and Visual Fixes

• Fixed water compilation errors affecting Potato, Very Low, and Low.
• Improved the stability of low-detail procedural water.
• Added safer custom normal-map reconstruction for labPBR resource packs.
• Stabilized PBR and POM displacement calculations.
• Improved GGX reflections at extreme viewing angles.
• Protected cloud-shadow calculations from invalid angles.
• Added safer anisotropic-filtering fallbacks.
• Fixed mathematical instability in pixelated rainbows near the horizon.

## 🧹 Cleaner Interface

• Removed obsolete Advanced Color Tracing controls.
• Removed unavailable World-Space Reflections options.
• Eliminated inherited and orphaned settings screens.
• Simplified the optimization menu.
• Improved profile consistency and default-value handling.

## 🧪 Stronger Automatic Validation

Lumina Shader Lite now automatically validates:

• Performance-profile order and safeguards.
• Menus, options, screens, and sliders.
• Lightweight shader program paths.
• Metadata and version consistency.
• Shader includes and conditional blocks.
• Release ZIP integrity and source parity.
• Invalid, duplicated, hidden, or obsolete controls.

These checks help prevent configuration mistakes and performance regressions in future updates. 🛡️

## 📈 The Result

• Up to **28–30% higher FPS** in testing.
• Faster shader activation on lower profiles.
• Lower GPU usage in expensive scenes.
• Better performance on integrated graphics.
• More consistent quality progression.
• Improved water and PBR stability.
• Cleaner menus and safer configuration.
• A beautiful new Moon halo with minimal performance cost.

💙 Thank you for using **Lumina Shader Lite**!

Enjoy smoother gameplay, faster performance, cleaner settings, and beautiful lightweight visuals with **v1.2.7 — Performance Unleashed**. 🚀✨

🌌 Lumina Shader Lite v1.2.6
This maintenance update makes Lumina Shader Lite more stable in difficult rendering conditions while preserving its lightweight design and visual identity. ✨

🛠️ Fixed — Rendering Stability
🛡️ Prevented black rectangles around enchanted armor and players by safely discarding near-transparent fragments.
🌤️ Prevented invalid NaN values in natural and ice light shafts when shadow colors have no length.
☁️ Stabilized cloud-shadow projection when the sun aligns with a horizontal world axis.
❄️ Protected biome-tint removal from division by zero on snowy terrain, leaves, and IPBR materials.
💧 Prevented high water-wave settings from producing invalid normal-map calculations.
🌫️ Protected Lightshaft Smoke from division by zero in empty volumetric samples.

🎨 Improved — Compatibility & Interface
👻 Preserved intentionally translucent modded entities while still discarding fully transparent fragments.
🎛️ Removed unavailable Advanced Color Tracing controls from the Lite interface and profiles.

✅ Validation
🔍 Version checks now require exact metadata matches and reject incorrect pre-release suffixes.
🤖 Added automatic shader validation for development pushes, main, and pull requests.
📦 Verified shader includes, preprocessor blocks, default profiles, metadata, and ZIP/source parity.
🧹 Confirmed that the final ZIP contains 397 files with no unnecessary macOS metadata.

💙 Thank you for using Lumina Shader Lite! Enjoy a cleaner, safer, and more stable visual experience.

🌌 Lumina Shader Lite v1.2.5

This update improves the sky, emissive lighting, visual customization, and stability while preserving Lumina Shader Lite’s lightweight design and performance-first philosophy. ✨

• ✨ Added**

🌠 Milky Way Brightness
Added a new Milky Way Brightness setting under Environment & Sky.
Available levels: OFF, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, 125%, and 150%.
The default value is 100%, preserving the original appearance.
Selecting OFF removes the Milky Way calculations from both the sky and reflection shaders, providing a small performance improvement.
🌋 Lava Brightness
Added an independent control for adjusting lava brightness.
Players can now reduce or increase lava intensity without changing other emissive materials.
🎨 Visual Improvements
☀️ The daytime horizon and distant atmospheric fog now use a cleaner, more natural sky-blue tone.
🌌 The Milky Way now follows the movement of the night sky correctly.
🔭 Improved the continuity of the Milky Way’s procedural pattern to prevent visible seams.
🌧️ Corrected the middle-sky coloration during heavy rain when using the Heavy & Colder weather style.
🌋 Improved the balance of lava emission and bloom.

• 🛠️ Fixed**

Prevented large lava surfaces from overexposing the image and washing the screen out to white.
Limited lava emission before it enters the Bloom pass.
Added a safety limit to the Bloom input to control extreme emissive sources.
Fixed an inherited bug that used the horizon rain color for the middle portion of the sky.
Applied the rainy-weather color correction both with and without SPECIAL_BIOME_WEATHER.
Removed the spherical-coordinate seam from the Milky Way.
Corrected the Milky Way’s celestial orientation so it moves naturally with the night sky.

• ⚡ Optimized**

Reduced the number of procedural noise calculations used by the Milky Way.
The Milky Way continues to use no additional textures, ray marching, or expensive volumetric effects.
Disabling the Milky Way completely excludes its calculations from the compiled sky and reflection shaders.
The default 100% setting preserves the intended appearance and Lumina Shader Lite’s performance-focused identity.

• ✅ Validation**

Validated shader references and includes.
Verified every conditional path used by the new options.
Validated the settings menu and every available value.
Verified distribution-package integrity and source parity.
Confirmed that the final ZIP contains 397 files.
Confirmed that no unnecessary macOS metadata, including .DS_Store, is present.

💙 Thank you for using Lumina Shader Lite! Enjoy brighter skies, better lighting, improved customization, and smooth performance.

Lumina Shader Lite v1.2.4 combines the validated RC4 visuals with the internal fixes and optimizations tested throughout the release-candidate cycle.

Added:

Wide diagonal Milky Way with rounded galactic clouds, warm core, cool outer haze and a warped dust lane.
Fixed:

Prevented NaN values during zero-luminance color normalization.
Corrected Distant Horizons temporal reprojection to reduce LOD ghosting.
Removed directional streaks from the Milky Way while preserving the dark midnight sky and existing stars.
Optimized:

Reused lightmap power calculations during shadow sampling.
Milky Way uses no texture samples, new assets or volumetric ray marching.
Validation:

Added automated metadata, include, preprocessor, profile and ZIP/source parity checks.

Final visual release candidate. This updates RC4 in place; no RC5 was created.

Fixed:

Removed the remaining fiber/curtain pattern caused by projecting pixel noise across the sky.
Changed:

Uses Lumina’s existing smooth cloud texture for coherent galactic masses.
Two independently rotated layers form the wide glow and irregular dust lane.
Preserves the diagonal arc, cool outer haze, warm core and dark midnight background.
Performance:

Reduced from three texture samples to two.
No new assets, iterative noise loops or volumetric ray marching.

Visual test candidate replacing the overly subtle RC2 Milky Way.

Changed:

Wider and substantially more visible galactic arc.
Irregular luminous clouds and fine-scale structure.
Warm, concentrated galactic core.
Warped central dust lane inspired by real Milky Way photography.
Performance design:

Reuses the existing shader noise texture.
Three texture samples only.
No iterative procedural-noise loops or volumetric ray marching.
Please test at midnight in clear weather and compare visibility near the horizon and zenith.

Visual test candidate based on RC1.

Added:

A subtle, naturally tilted Milky Way band while preserving the dark midnight sky and current stars.
A lightweight central dust lane and gentle structural variation.
The same subtle band in eligible high-quality sky reflections.
Performance design:

No additional texture samples.
No loops or volumetric noise.
Uses a small analytic calculation and fades out during rain, daylight and obstructed visibility.
Please test at midnight from open terrain, looking from horizon to zenith, with and without rain.

Candidate for in-game testing before the stable v1.2.4 release.

Fixed:

Prevents NaN values during zero-luminance color normalization.
Corrects Distant Horizons temporal reprojection to reduce LOD ghosting during camera movement.
Optimized:

Reuses lightmap power calculations during shadow sampling.
Please test dark scenes, camera movement near Distant Horizons LOD transitions, and shadows across the performance profiles.

Changelog
1.2.3 - 2026-07-13
Lumina Shader Lite 1.2.3 is a maintenance release focused exclusively on bug fixes. It does not introduce intentional visual changes or new features.

Fixed
Corrected vertical image-sharpening offsets on non-square resolutions.
Replaced undefined reversed smoothstep calls in dark-color tonemapping.
Corrected the Distant Horizons water fade to behave consistently across GPU drivers.
Removed invalid GLSL text from the reserved composite2 program.
Centered the final dithering noise to prevent a small positive brightness bias.
Added the missing default profile mapping so the active defaults are identified correctly.
Removed the incorrect "Default" label from the High profile.

🌟 Lumina Shader: Lite Edition — v1.2.2 Changelog
🌤️ 1. Cloud Shadow Optimization (Community Feedback)
Disabled by Default: Commented out the #define CLOUD_SHADOWS directive in the global configuration file (common.glsl).

The Fix: Resolves a community-reported issue (highlighted by creators on TikTok) where cloud shadows appeared too blocky or harsh for a lightweight shader. Disabling this by default saves a massive solar light calculation pass, significantly boosting baseline performance (fully toggleable in the settings menu).

🌊 2. Premium Water Overhaul ("Butter Shader" Style)
Smooth Stylized Base: Completely removed the pixelated vanilla Minecraft texture grid (colorP.rgb). Replaced it with a sleek, flat, and modern look inside water.glsl (colorPM = vec3(0.35)).

Vibrant Turquoise Glow: Tweaked the biome-specific coefficients (glColorM) to a stunning turquoise/cyan tint (vec3(0.85, 1.08, 1.32)) and amplified its emission brightness to 0.55 * glColorM for a glowing, crystal-clear tropical look.

Parallax Displacement Bypass (Massive FPS Save): Disabled the heavy ray-marching relief loop (#if 0), cutting down 8 texture lookups per pixel to guarantee blazing-fast rendering speeds on integrated GPUs.

Sleek Gloss Speculars: Unified specular reflections to a high smoothness value of 0.55 (smoothnessG), delivering clean, cinematic sun/moon reflections on the water surface instead of pixelated noise.

Compilation Safety Guard (30 FPS Restored): Wrapped advanced normal mapping calculations inside a safe conditional block (#if WATER_STYLE >= 2). This fixes a critical shader compilation warning/bug on low-end profiles, instantly restoring up to 30 lost FPS.

Uniform Opacity: Set water alpha transparency to a polished 0.52 value for maximum underwater visibility and clean depth blending.

🌌 3. Vibrant & High-Saturation Skies
Redesigned all atmospheric color profiles inside skyColors.glsl to eliminate the default washed-out look and provide punchy, high-contrast skies:

☀️ Daytime: Shifted the upper sky to a rich indigo (vec3(0.68, 0.82, 1.15)) and the mid-sky to a bright, summery cyan (vec3(1.15, 1.3, 1.45)).

🌅 Sunset (Golden Hour): Adjusted the horizon to a majestic amber-gold (vec3(1.70, 0.80, 0.30)), the mid-layer to a fiery orange (vec3(2.1, 1.20, 0.80)), and the upper twilight to a beautiful orange-magenta gradient (vec3(0.75, 0.40, 0.60)).

🌙 Nighttime: Configured the night sky blend into a deep, aesthetic indigo-midnight blue (vec3(0.03, 0.09, 0.24)).

📦 4. Deployment & Build Cleanup
Version Sync: Officially bumped the shader versioning to v1.2.2 across both project metadata (pack.json) and the localization interface strings (en_US.lang).

Clean Packaging: Generated the final deployment archive, wiping out all temporary developer cache and unoptimized asset residues.

Lumina Shader: Lite v1.2.1 - Ultimate Optimization
1. Brand & Credits

Main Developer: Benjiaa is now officially established as the Lead Developer.

UI Cleanup: Simplified the "Information" menu by removing social links for a faster, cleaner experience.

2. Extreme Performance Boost ⚡

Ultra-Fast Shadows: Shadow resolution and distance have been further tuned to ensure maximum FPS on low-end PCs and integrated graphics.

Efficient Lighting: Simplified Volumetric Lighting and SSAO passes to maintain the "Lumina look" without the performance cost.

Optimized Reflections: Water and surface reflections have been streamlined for maximum efficiency.

## Lumina Lite v1.1.1 — The Stability & Precision Update ⚡
This update brings critical technical fixes and performance balancing to ensure Lumina Lite runs flawlessly on all hardware.

✨ Visual Improvements
Shadow Precision Tuning: Optimized shadow depth precision (0.3). This fixes "Peter Panning" (floating shadows) and ensures shadows remain sharp and stable as you move through the world.

End Dimension Lighting Fix: Implemented radial lighting in the End. Blocks and entities now have proper depth and volume in the dark dimension.

🚀 Performance & Optimization
Optimized God Rays: Volumetric lighting samples have been adjusted to 12 samples. This maintains the cinematic look while providing a significant FPS boost for low-end GPUs.

Internal Cleanup: Stripped unused colored lighting logic when disabled to reduce GPU overhead.

🛠️ Bug Fixes & Compatibility
Distant Horizons Fix: Removed water elevation offsets to prevent Z-fighting (flickering) when using the Distant Horizons mod.

Stability Patch: Fixed minor glsl syntax issues for better compatibility with newer Iris/Oculus versions.

## Lumina Lite v1.1.0 - Performance & Clarity Update

The first major update for the Lite version is here! We've focused on making the shader even faster for low-end PCs while improving the overall look.

### 🚀 Performance Improvements:

• Optimized God Rays:** Drastically reduced internal sample count. You will see a significant FPS boost, especially during sunrise and sunset.
• Efficient Clouds:** 3D clouds have been re-tuned to be lighter on your GPU.
• Optimized TAA:** New Anti-Aliasing configuration that is faster and reduces ghosting/blurriness.

### 🎨 Visual Enhancements:

• Neutral Color Calibration:** Implemented a new 6500K White Balance. The world no longer looks yellowish; colors are now natural and vibrant.
• Better Exposure:** Fixed the brightness levels (Exposure 1.15) so the world looks clear even on the darkest days.

### 🛠️ Technical Details:

• Full 1.21+ Support:** Updated pack_format to 34 for full compatibility with the latest Minecraft versions.
• Official Version:** This is the ONLY official and original Lumina Shader project.

## Lumina Shader - Lite v1.0.0

The wait is over! This version is specifically optimized for low-end PCs and integrated graphics (Intel HD/UHD, Vega, etc.).

### Key Features:

• High FPS:** Optimized to run at 60+ FPS on most hardware.
• Vanilla Clouds:** Replaced volumetric clouds with high-performance 2D square clouds.
• Smart Shadows:** Reduced shadow resolution and distance for maximum performance.
• Optimized Fog:** Clean and simple fog for better visibility.
• Vibrant Colors:** Keeps the original Lumina aesthetic with zero lag.

Enjoy Minecraft with beautiful lighting without losing performance!