CSM Shaders is a very minimal proof-of-concept demo for using Cascaded Shadow Mapping in Minecraft. This is meant to serve as a learning resource or template for other works, not as a final product itself.
Features:
This shaderpack includes:
- Shadows (obviously)
- Colored shadows (cast by translucent blocks like stained glass)
- Shadow bias (prevents shadow acne)
- Shadow distortion (higher resolution shadows near the player)
- An example of how to prevent certain blocks from casting shadows.
It does NOT include:
- PCSS
- Volumetric light
- Custom light colors (it just uses the vanilla lightmap instead)
- Block shading
Shadow Types:
- None: No shadows at all. Just a visual/performance benchmark comparison.
- Basic: Uses the Optifine defaults for shadow mapping, with no additional improvements. It’s expected to look really bad…
- Distorted: Uses the Optifine defaults for shadow mapping, but also applies distortion to the projection to improve detail of nearby shadows. This significantly improves quality, but also causes visible displacement of long shadows.
- Cascading: Splits the shadow map into 4 cascades with varying levels of detail. This greatly improves shadow quality in the same way as distorted shadow maps, but does not cause any visual distortion since it is completely orthographic. This does however introduce artifacts when objects transition between different cascade levels.
Filter Types:
- None: No filtering of shadow map, just a simple binary result.
- PCF: Uses a fixed-size kernel to perform percent-closer-filtering of the shadowmap. This provides a fixed softening factor for shadows, but also introduces visual artifects as sample occlusion will increase with light angle.
- PCF + PCSS: Extends PCF filtering with percent-closer-soft-shadows. This technique uses an additional pre-blocker-check to adjust the radius of the PCF filtering, removing the artifacts caused by PCF alone.
🎛️ Compare Minecraft Shaders Side by Side →
Drag the slider across real in-game scenes — find YOUR perfect shader.
CSM Shaders Download Links
Quick facts
- Edition: Minecraft Java
- File type: .zip (resource pack)
- Minecraft version listed: 1.20.1
- How to install: Download the .zip resource pack — do not unzip it. → Put it in .minecraft/resourcepacks. → Enable it in Options → Resource Packs.
- Where to get it: In MC Java Mods, or directly above on this page.
Install steps are the general flow for this file type — see the MC Java Mods guides for the full walkthrough.
CSM Shaders (26.3, 1.20.1) – Cascaded Shadow Mapping in Minecraft is a free Minecraft Java shader. Compatible with Minecraft 1.20.1. Download it and open it directly in the game.