Golden Spring Shader V1

Warm. Cinematic. Alive.

Golden Spring transforms Minecraft Java into a warm, cinematic world drenched in golden-hour light. Amber sunlight casts long soft shadows across lush landscapes while cool blue-purple tones settle deep into the shade that unmistakable late-afternoon glow you never knew Minecraft could have.

Built on a fully physics-based rendering pipeline with atmospheric scattering, reflective shadow mapping, and PCSS shadows then tuned with our signature warm colour grade to make every screenshot look like concept art.

Features

Lighting

Physical atmospheric scattering — Rayleigh + Mie model. Sky colour shifts naturally with sun elevation throughout the day, producing a realistic gradient from deep blue zenith to warm amber horizon at sunrise and sunset
PCSS soft shadows — Penumbra-Correct Soft Shadows create wide, blurry edges far from casters and sharp, defined edges close up — exactly how real sunlight behaves
Coloured shadow support — Light passes through stained glass and leaves with accurate colour tinting
RSM Global Illumination — Reflective Shadow Mapping bounces coloured light into shadowed areas, brightening corners and crevices with indirect illumination
GTAO ambient occlusion — Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion adds realistic contact shadows where surfaces meet

Sky & atmosphere

Physics-based sky — Full Rayleigh + Mie single-scattering model for accurate sky and fog colours
Volumetric clouds — Full 3D raymarched clouds with self-shadowing, multiple scattering approximation, and dynamic weather coverage
Volumetric fog & god rays — Screen-space godrays pierce through cloud gaps and treelines
Celestial bodies — Physically-scaled sun, moon, and stars

Water

Screen-space reflections (SSR) — Real-time reflections of the world on water surfaces
Wave parallax — Deep, parallaxed wave normals for convincing water depth
Caustics — Underwater light caustics shimmer on the seabed
Underwater volumetric lighting — Shafts of light penetrate below the surface
Water mist — Atmospheric mist rises from water at dawn

Post-processing

Golden hour colour grade — Our signature look: warm amber highlights, cool blue-lavender shadows, boosted saturation on greens and golds
ACES filmic tonemapping — Cinematic tone curve that preserves highlight and shadow detail
Auto exposure — Scene adapts naturally between day and night
Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) — Smooth, stable edges without jaggies
FSR RCAS sharpening — AMD FidelityFX sharpening keeps fine detail crisp
Depth of field — Cinematic bokeh blur on out-of-focus geometry
Motion blur — Smooth camera motion on fast movement
Bloom — High-quality dual-filter bloom on bright light sources
Lens vignette — Subtle cinematic darkening at screen edges
Film grain — Tasteful noise adds photographic textures

Performance profiles

Profile	Recommended GPU	Shadow res	Clouds	RSM
Low	GTX 1080 / RX 580	1024	Basic	Off
Medium	RTX 2070 / RX 5700 XT	2048	Standard	On
High	RTX 3070 / RX 6700 XT	2048	Enhanced	On
Ultra	RTX 3080 / RX 6800 XT+	4096	Full 3D	On

Requirements

Iris Shaders 1.6.0+ (OptiFine is NOT supported)
Minecraft Java Edition 1.16 – 1.21
GPU with OpenGL 4.5 support
4 GB VRAM minimum (8 GB recommended for Ultra profile)
PBR resource pack optional but recommended for enhanced normal maps

Frequently Asked Questions

Does it work with OptiFine? - No. GoldenSpring uses GLSL 4.50 features that require Iris. OptiFine only supports GLSL 1.20.

Which profile should I use? - Start with Medium. If you get below 30fps, drop to Low. If you're above 60fps consistently, try High.

Can I use it with a PBR resource pack? - Yes! Golden Spring fully supports labPBR resource packs for enhanced normal mapping, specular highlights, and emissive blocks.

Why does rain look different? - Make sure you're on at least the Medium profile as rain rendering is disabled on Low.

Credits

Golden Spring Shader is a original work.

Please check out the repository on github Golden Spring Github

Open source algorithms referenced (all publicly available academic/community techniques):

ACES filmic tone mapping (Academy Color Encoding System)
PCSS (Randima Fernando, 2005)
Henyey-Greenstein phase function (Henyey & Greenstein, 1941)
TAA (Temporal Anti-Aliasing, industry standard)
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution RCAS sharpening pass