terrashade

Terrashade is a lightweight Fabric client mod designed to enhance Minecraft's shadow rendering by leveraging occlusion data embedded in resource packs. Rather than replacing your existing shader setup, Terrashade works alongside it — reading shadow hint profiles that pack authors can embed to describe how light should interact with complex geometry like foliage canopies, overhangs, and interior spaces.

The core of the mod is its shadow data generation engine, which scans installed resource packs for embedded occlusion maps during idle client ticks. These profiles describe light falloff curves, ambient occlusion intensity, and penumbra softness for specific block configurations. Once parsed and cached, the data feeds into a lightweight shadow casting pass that refines the existing shadow map with higher-fidelity occlusion — giving you softer, more realistic shadows under trees, inside caves, and along terrain edges without the performance cost of a full path-traced solution.

Terrashade operates entirely in the background using Minecraft's native utility execution system, requires no configuration, and introduces no measurable frame time overhead. It's ideal for players who want subtle shadow improvements without committing to a heavy shader pack.

Features:

• Background occlusion map reader with dynamic shadow profile caching
• Resource pack-aware shadow data extraction using embedded lightmap hints
• Native shadow casting integration — no shader replacement needed
• Tick-based scanning with adaptive interval for zero frame impact
• Automatic profile detection from server and local resource packs
• Supports Lunar Client resource pack paths
• Client-side only, zero configuration required
• Compatible with Iris, Sodium, and vanilla shaders