Cinematic Drift — Dynamic Clouds

A client-side cloud simulation and Iris integration for Minecraft Java 26.3. Clouds lift across mountains, flow through valleys, descend over ridges and fade on the lee side. Actual loaded world terrain drives the effect, including Tectonic terrain.

Cinematic Drift expands on Complementary with a more cinematic look, water shader fixes carried forward from the CinematicWater customizations, and dynamic terrain-responsive clouds. This upload contains the Ridge Clouds client mod only; it does not bundle Complementary or the customized shader pack.

Features

• Terrain-driven cloud lift, diversion and ridge spill with soft volumetric lighting.
• Faster cloud drift at mountain elevations, with configurable mountain wind gain.
• Density and wind settings in the matching Cinematic Drift shader options.
• Native Complementary cloud coverage and weather response, with adjustable overrides.
• Client-side only; no server installation required.

Requirements and installation

Minecraft 26.3, Java 25, Fabric Loader 0.19.5 or newer, Fabric API 0.162.0+26.3, Iris 1.11.7 and Sodium 0.9.2. Place the JAR in your Fabric profile’s mods folder.

The mod requires the matching CinematicDrift_DynamicClouds shader patch to render its clouds. Installing this JAR with an arbitrary shader pack will not add the effect. The custom pack is generated locally from ComplementaryUnbound_r5.9.3_CinematicWater using the project patcher; that input shader and the generated pack are not included in this download.

Select the matching shader and choose Cloud Mode: Dynamic. Vanilla and Volumetric remain comparison options. The shader mode controls disable duplicate vanilla/Distant Horizons clouds.

Limitations

Experimental build tied to the versions above. Terrain sampling uses loaded client chunks, not Distant Horizons LOD terrain. Tectonic is optional. Still screenshots show appearance, not measured performance or flow speed.

Credits and license

Complementary Shaders by EminGT / Complementary Development: https://www.complementary.dev/ . This is an independent customization, not an official Complementary release. Complementary retains its own license. This uploaded client mod is MIT licensed.