Vanilla RTX Normals

View all changes since last release on github: Vanilla-RTX/compare/release-2026-09-05…release-2026-10-10

Summary:

- Added full support for all Wilderness Bound blocks, including the entire poplar wood set, straw bed, shelf mushrooms, and more… Fully hand-made normal maps for Vanilla RTX Normals, and like always, consistent and well-designed materials throughout
- Dappled Forest biome now has its very own unique atmosphere with RTX. Darker atmosphere with mildly blue-shifted colors to convey its status as a Cold biome
- Enhanced all new particles from the Wilderness Bound game drop for ray tracing
-Updated several already-existing particle definitions to include their newer/changed properties from later game updates
- Reworked Fire and Soul fire (and campfires) emissivity, both now emit significantly more light and produce less noise/firefly effect The overwhelming majority of the emissivity now comes from invisible static pixels around the fire texture, as opposed to the constantly shifting colors, which produced noise At the same time, made Soul fire significantly weaker compared to regular fire, to further emphasize their Fancy graphics light level differences
- Updated all campfire/fire MERS with properly animated MERS Previously they used a MER based on the average of all stages This was done in 2021 to work around the fact that animated MERS didn't work, but now they do. Almost every other item that was in the same boat was updated already, fire was left out until today
- Improved End fog for a purpler, darker atmosphere that matches Fancy graphics brightness, distant lights now get purple-shifted due to the fog now producing a strong purple color.
- Improved fog across all 5 Nether biomes, colors are now more accurate to vanilla game/fancy colors and each biome's intended theme, e.g. crimson forest now appears more red, and soul sand valleys appear to scatter more blue light.
- Resolved disparities of MERS between Vanilla RTX Normals and Vanilla RTX Note: while this was intentional all along, going forward, maintaining two different, consistent palettes of colors across two packs carried minimal benefit and was more of a thing done for correctness This just means certain things in Vanilla RTX Normals, and consequently Opus, are going to appear a bit less rough/more glossy than usual. Things like planks, planks on a Crafter, lectern, etc… are also impacted
- Updated Hay texture based on the most recent update, and updated PBR textures to match the new color texture
- Updated sulfur spike up tip merge; Mojang had updated a pixel on this texture, so the MERS were updated to match this change.
- Updated pale oak sapling subsurface scattering to match the style of other saplings, with only the leaf parts having SSS
- Adjusted Sulfur, Potent Sulfur, and Cinnabar block normal maps to be closer in style to blocks like Calcite In effect, you might notice the normal map is ever so slightly less blurry, and mildly stronger
- Improved cherry shelf normal map to better follow its texture (namely, which parts are considered to be carved-in on the shelf)
- Improved pale oak log side normal map
- Adjusted ancient debris side normal map
- Minor revisions to numerous other normal maps, very little visual impact, mostly for the sake of correctness, so they aren't mentioned in the changelogs
- Added poplar door darkening issue workaround (MCPE-121412)
- Updated format version of client biomes to the latest
- Minimum required Minecraft version is now 1.26.50
- Known issue: Red shrub renders incorrectly (MCPE-189266 fix for both red shrub and poplar sapling is applied, but only works for the sapling and not the red bush at the moment, a future update might fix it, the reason for this is unknown)
- Updated blocks.json schema