Golden Spring

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
  

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Performance profiles

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

Golden Spring V1 – © 2026. All rights reserved.