Cinematic Horizon Shaders

Cinematic Horizon Shaders is a cinematic realism shader pack for Minecraft Java Edition, built around a lightweight custom rendering pipeline with enhanced water, volumetric clouds, realistic lighting, reflective materials, and configurable performance profiles.

The pack is designed to provide a dramatic, high-quality appearance while remaining practical for gameplay, recording, and livestreaming.

Features

Wet and Shiny Block Reflections

Reflective lighting has been added to materials that should appear polished, metallic, icy, or wet.

Supported surfaces include:

• Iron, gold, copper, and netherite blocks
• Diamond, emerald, lapis, and amethyst blocks
• Quartz and polished stone
• Glazed terracotta
• Ice, packed ice, and blue ice

Enhanced Light Sources

Light-emitting blocks appear brighter and more atmospheric, including:

• Torches and soul torches
• Lanterns and soul lanterns
• Froglights
• Glowstone and shroomlights
• Sea lanterns
• Redstone lamps
• Campfires and fire
• End rods
• Beacons
• Candles

Regular level-14 light sources are designed to remain visible for approximately five blocks, while level-15 sources can reach approximately six blocks.

Improved Lighting

• Dynamic sunlight and shadows
• Coloured sunrise and sunset lighting
• Ambient occlusion
• Moving foliage
• Rain-dependent lighting
• Reflective sunlight on polished surfaces
• Restrained cinematic bloom
• Natural colour grading and exposure

Performance Profiles

Performance

Designed for higher frame rates.

• Reduced cloud sample count
• Lower shadow quality
• Reduced reflection distance
• Lower ambient occlusion
• Simplified water waves

Balanced

Recommended for normal gameplay and recording.

• Medium cloud quality
• Moderate reflections
• Moving cloud shadows
• Detailed water
• Balanced lighting quality and performance

Cinematic

Designed for screenshots, trailers, and powerful systems.

• High-quality volumetric clouds
• Higher-quality water reflections
• Stronger wet and polished-material reflections
• Maximum shadow quality
• Enhanced ambient occlusion and lighting detail

Recommended Hardware

The Balanced profile is intended for modern dedicated graphics cards.

The Cinematic profile is best suited to higher-performance GPUs, especially when playing at 1440p or higher resolutions.

Performance will vary depending on:

• Render distance
• Shadow distance
• Minecraft resolution
• Cloud quality
• Water reflection quality
• Resource-pack resolution
• Installed mods

Requirements

• Minecraft Java Edition
• Iris Shaders
• A compatible Fabric installation

Sodium is recommended for improved performance.

Installation

1. Install Fabric, Iris, and Sodium.

2. Download the shader ZIP.

3. Place the ZIP directly into:

   .minecraft/shaderpacks

4. Do not extract the shader ZIP.

5. Start Minecraft.

6. Open:

   Options → Video Settings → Shader Packs

7. Select Cinematic Horizon Shaders.

8. Begin with the Balanced profile.

When replacing an older version, remove or disable the previous ZIP and fully restart Minecraft.

Configuration

The shader settings menu includes controls for:

• Water quality
• Water reflection quality
• Water reflection strength
• Wave strength
• Wet block reflections
• Dry material shine
• Cloud quality
• Cloud coverage
• Cloud density
• Cloud speed
• Cloud height
• Cloud thickness
• Cloud-shadow strength
• Emissive lighting
• Light radius
• Exposure
• Saturation
• Ambient occlusion
• Bloom

Credits

Cinematic Horizon Shaders uses its own compact shader structure and visual direction.

Selected rendering techniques and the included cloud-water noise asset were adapted from the user-supplied Complementary Unbound shader archive by Complementary Development.

This is an independent shader project and is not an official Complementary release.

The applicable Complementary licence and attribution information are included inside the shader archive.

Important Notice

Do not redistribute this shader pack without preserving all included credits, attribution files, and licences.

Before publishing a modified shader pack, confirm that all included assets and adapted code may be redistributed under their respective licence terms.