WardenWolf
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Shaders info:
Shaders are a great way to enhance your Minecraft experience, and there are many different shader packs available and they each improve your visual experience and affect your game performance in different ways. Depending on your video card, you may even be able to live with shaders on all the time. However, this requires a very powerful card so it is likely not a viable option for many people.
First, to get shaders, you will need the Shaders Mod. It is not absolutely required, but it is strongly recommended you get OptiFine as well, because OptiFine dramatically improves performance and will offset much of the extra load of running shaders.
OptiFine can be gotten HERE.
Shaders Mod, maintained by Karyonix, can be gotten HERE. Make sure you install OptiFine first.
Shader Packs:
Now, for the packs. The Shaders Mod doesn't do anything by itself. You need to add shader packs for you to do anything. Below are a list of packs that I have tested to work well and not cause problems. If I don't list a pack, it doesn't mean it's not good. It just means I either haven't tried it yet or didn't find it noteworthy (too similar to others). Try it and you may like it. I will publish a warning if I encounter any extremely bad packs, though.
Packs that I've tested and recommend:
BSL+: BSL+ is a newer shader pack, and what makes it stand out is how configurable it is. Whereas most shader packs break things by deviating too far from stock Minecraft, resulting in overly dim or yellow interiors or water that is invisible when used in fountains, BSL+ is HIGHLY configurable. For water, I recommend an RGB value of 152 / 212 / 255 and Alpha and Intensity values of 0.75 and 0.65, respectively. For Blocklight color, set it to 255 / 192 / 148 with an Intensity of .9. For Post Process, turn Bloom Strength down to .25. Do this, and you will get something that looks very close to stock Minecraft under all conditions, but definitely looks better overall. It doesn't have the water reflectivity of some of the others, but the results are still quite impressive. This is the BEST choice by far for fountains or shallow bodies of water, as, with the above settings, it does not make the water go invisible.
SEUS: SEUS features fully reflective water, waving plants, and other very nice aspects. It tends to be very bright, and is great for areas like Minas Tirith where you want those white walls to shine. I can no longer recommend this pack for interior shots, though, as current versions tend to be darker and have a heavily yellow tinted torchlight that cannot be adjusted. For that, I recommend BSL+.
MineCloud: MineCloud features waving plants, refractive water (does not reflect exact shapes) and a much warmer, more yellow lighting than SEUS. It works well for natural areas like The Shire and Rohan, but not so well at Minas Tirith.
ChocaPic13: ChocaPic's shaders are a good intermediate between MineCloud and SEUS. They're more yellow than SEUS but less so than MineCloud. This pack will work well pretty much anywhere. Overall, I think this pack produces the best night shots. It is also highly configurable in the newer versions, although not quite to the same extent as BSL+. You can at least adjust it for brighter interior lighting and less yellow torchlight.
RudoPlays: RudoPlays is lighter than the others listed above but may cause some odd lighting issues as you move around, as it does not update as often to improve performance. It's still a decent pack
Packs to avoid:
Sasuked's pack: avoid at ALL costs. This will most likely lock up your game, even on an extremely beefy computer. I got 1-2 FPS just standing still, and barely managed to turn it off.
Screenshot tips:
First, I need to state that most shaders should not be used in certain areas of MCME, as they destroy the ambiance that people worked so hard to create. The two notable ones I have found so far are Glistening Caves and Lothlorien. The problem is that their yellow lighting bloom simply destroy the cold blue lighting that was intended for these areas. You may be able to get away with BSL+ if it has been properly tuned, though.
Screenshots should be taken to take best effect of dramatic lighting. In order to achieve the best affect, you can change the time for yourself by typing "/playertime night", "/playertime day", or "/playertime 12:00" (where 12:00 would be the desired time). There are a few odd bugs when specifying exact times, so just do your best to find what works.
Beyond that, have fun, and enjoy the enhanced beauty that shaders bring.
Happy building!
WardenWolf
Shaders are a great way to enhance your Minecraft experience, and there are many different shader packs available and they each improve your visual experience and affect your game performance in different ways. Depending on your video card, you may even be able to live with shaders on all the time. However, this requires a very powerful card so it is likely not a viable option for many people.
First, to get shaders, you will need the Shaders Mod. It is not absolutely required, but it is strongly recommended you get OptiFine as well, because OptiFine dramatically improves performance and will offset much of the extra load of running shaders.
OptiFine can be gotten HERE.
Shaders Mod, maintained by Karyonix, can be gotten HERE. Make sure you install OptiFine first.
Shader Packs:
Now, for the packs. The Shaders Mod doesn't do anything by itself. You need to add shader packs for you to do anything. Below are a list of packs that I have tested to work well and not cause problems. If I don't list a pack, it doesn't mean it's not good. It just means I either haven't tried it yet or didn't find it noteworthy (too similar to others). Try it and you may like it. I will publish a warning if I encounter any extremely bad packs, though.
Packs that I've tested and recommend:
BSL+: BSL+ is a newer shader pack, and what makes it stand out is how configurable it is. Whereas most shader packs break things by deviating too far from stock Minecraft, resulting in overly dim or yellow interiors or water that is invisible when used in fountains, BSL+ is HIGHLY configurable. For water, I recommend an RGB value of 152 / 212 / 255 and Alpha and Intensity values of 0.75 and 0.65, respectively. For Blocklight color, set it to 255 / 192 / 148 with an Intensity of .9. For Post Process, turn Bloom Strength down to .25. Do this, and you will get something that looks very close to stock Minecraft under all conditions, but definitely looks better overall. It doesn't have the water reflectivity of some of the others, but the results are still quite impressive. This is the BEST choice by far for fountains or shallow bodies of water, as, with the above settings, it does not make the water go invisible.
SEUS: SEUS features fully reflective water, waving plants, and other very nice aspects. It tends to be very bright, and is great for areas like Minas Tirith where you want those white walls to shine. I can no longer recommend this pack for interior shots, though, as current versions tend to be darker and have a heavily yellow tinted torchlight that cannot be adjusted. For that, I recommend BSL+.
MineCloud: MineCloud features waving plants, refractive water (does not reflect exact shapes) and a much warmer, more yellow lighting than SEUS. It works well for natural areas like The Shire and Rohan, but not so well at Minas Tirith.
ChocaPic13: ChocaPic's shaders are a good intermediate between MineCloud and SEUS. They're more yellow than SEUS but less so than MineCloud. This pack will work well pretty much anywhere. Overall, I think this pack produces the best night shots. It is also highly configurable in the newer versions, although not quite to the same extent as BSL+. You can at least adjust it for brighter interior lighting and less yellow torchlight.
RudoPlays: RudoPlays is lighter than the others listed above but may cause some odd lighting issues as you move around, as it does not update as often to improve performance. It's still a decent pack
Packs to avoid:
Sasuked's pack: avoid at ALL costs. This will most likely lock up your game, even on an extremely beefy computer. I got 1-2 FPS just standing still, and barely managed to turn it off.
Screenshot tips:
First, I need to state that most shaders should not be used in certain areas of MCME, as they destroy the ambiance that people worked so hard to create. The two notable ones I have found so far are Glistening Caves and Lothlorien. The problem is that their yellow lighting bloom simply destroy the cold blue lighting that was intended for these areas. You may be able to get away with BSL+ if it has been properly tuned, though.
Screenshots should be taken to take best effect of dramatic lighting. In order to achieve the best affect, you can change the time for yourself by typing "/playertime night", "/playertime day", or "/playertime 12:00" (where 12:00 would be the desired time). There are a few odd bugs when specifying exact times, so just do your best to find what works.
Beyond that, have fun, and enjoy the enhanced beauty that shaders bring.
Happy building!
WardenWolf
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