timetravelbeard
patreon
Icarus Shaders -September 2025 (early access updates)
🕑 Added 2025-09-05 22:18:52 +0000 UTCWhat's New This Week (Quick):
Fixed Colored Shadows (read below)
SSR can be disabled
Water as seen here: https://youtu.be/qqs34ZhdQ9s?si=fchQgciWrOViqv3O
Some stuff might be broken, I'm in the middle of a lot but won't get more done this week
Full change logs are below ...
Info:
Developed for iris, tested in minecraft 1.20.1 (and 1.21.8) If you get bugs in other mc versions let me know!
Version Numbers:
version numbers are the date I made them, the newest is usually the best. (It's Year-month-day format)
for example 'Icarus v 2025 -3-29' is the version of the shader I uploaded on March 29th 2025
Extra Attachments:
Inside of the shader.zip file is a folder called 'Extras' which has Extra stuff in it that you can use for extra features, including config files and resource packs.
Modpack / Test Environment:
this is my main test environment: https://modrinth.com/modpack/timetravelbeards-1.20.1-modpack
I also usually test newer mc versions with the 'Fabulously Optimized' modpack or just plain Iris & Sodium
Versions Changelogs:
2025-9-22:
this version might be half broken on some stuff, I am in the middle of changing a lot. But I won't get any better done this week, I am in the middle of a big mess getting waves to go as far as you can see
fixed soft shadows from colored glass (but option might need to be turned on)
Option to disable all Screen Space Reflection Data (per request)
Water Stuff I am redoing as seen here: https://youtu.be/qqs34ZhdQ9s?si=n-beYBfSNLyLDclz
2025-9-19:
Completely Revamped Integrated PBR System (better materials & lighting even where no pbr textures)
New Menus & Cleaner Menus
New Smart-IPBR
generates textures only when needed
enhances labpbr format where it can
optional enhancements / Overrides for textures
I-PBR Support for Conquest Reforged / ArdaCraft
Including Plants, glass, & metals for ALL variants of blocks (hopefully)
Full porosity / roughness support coming soon
I made custom scripts to generate exhaustive ipbr lists
Fixed Buggy shadow blobs from Distant Horizons
Just deleted the distant Horizons shadow program for now, it's waiting on Iris/DH to fix this better
Stained Glass is a bit better, but not finished yet
less bright & flickery
no fixed colored shadowmap from Sun/Moon yet
Next
I really need to tackle colored glass problems with shadowmaps
I want to try to fix colored glass & water rendering before the end of the month
2025-9-12:
Completely Reworked Light Scatter through Materials (SSS or Sub-Surface Scattering)
Leaves, Grass, Plants, Forests & Swamps should look a lot better
Honey Comb can be used to create really interesting accent lighting
Right Now this is hard-coded for some of it, I will work on Auto-Detection later. It's hard to pack more data and not lose more fps
Bloom & Lens Flares
Lower strength on defaults
Dynamically appearing Star-Shaped Flares also defaulted On
Still waiting on the Poll to get more votes about what you'd like the defaults to be
Tonemapping
Defaulting to the 'unreal' style tonemapping now
Outside looks better with this since bloom was redone
Caves look darker, let me know how you feel about this, I can make adjustments
SEE HERE about changing Cave Darkness: https://youtu.be/y70cxTKg2g8?si=fo94HG979zHJgPip
Fog
Fog changed from linear to exponential when using the default 'Pegasus' Volumetric renderer
Adjust the fog in 'Nature & Atmosphere/Fog/' and it's towards the bottom
Seamless 3D Textures
The CTM/POM-Fix no longer has flickering
3D Material transitions work again
I updated the curseforge for textures to include the 'borders' now for that
Next
I really need to tackle colored glass problems with shadowmaps
I want to try to fix colored glass & water rendering
2025-9-5:
Menu Clean Up:
- Profiles Re-benchmarked in 1.21.8 (some presets are running better, some worse, some the same)
- Better Color Coding of the presets by fps to show range better at a quick glance
- Better presets description page in 'Help & Info'
- Bloom & Lens Flares Menus
- Help & Info Updated
- Manual Exposure setting added to Bloom page since both affect Overall Brightness and it's good to adjust side by side for artistic control
- A few missing tooltips have been added
- 'Profile Changes' page updated
Bloom & Lens Flares
- In 'Camera & Color & Effects/Bloom & Lens Flares' they are On by default but can be turned Off
- Mostly complete and defaulted to using the new 'Style 5'
- Much more Optimized
- Much more subtle
- Very Adjustable
- Menus are complete with tooltips
- Lens Flaes are also defaulted On, but much more subtle than in previous test build
- Star Shaped Flares can be added on top of the Bloom, not only as a type of bloom, these are defaulted Off
- Star shaped flares appear dynamically
- Removed buggy artifacts from Kawase Bloom
- added HDR toggle for lens flares, defaulted On, might save a few fps off idk, but it looks better On
-'Dirty Screen' effect is less strong, and more adjustable
Brightness:
- Lowered AutoExposure 'Low' to rebalance with the new bloom, so that bloom isn't too bright in caves.
Presets:
- Added 'Flood fill' preset that uses floodfill, but not pathtracing, for colored lighting, and is faster than 'Hybrid' and better looking than 'Classic Low'.
- Fixed lack of ambient sky light on presets: 'Classic Low' and 'Grass Test (Low)'
- renamed 'Classic (Low)' to 'Classic (Very Low)' to emphasize that it's not path tracing but only raytracing
- 'Textures in Reflections' changed from 'none' to 'color' on all 'Medium' presets. I only saw 0 to 1 fps loss, but this was the one setting I changed in 'Medium Hybrid' all the time
Performance:
- All profiles re-benchmarked, there have been performance changes in 1.21.8 vs 1.20.1
- Star shaped flares are now 4x faster than before
- kawase bloom is much more optimized
- lens flares optimized
- Floodfill preset added
-'Quick Performance/Tracing Steps / Distance' can now be turned lower. Setting to 0 uses floodfill but no pathtracing. 20 or 10 might suit you and will run better than the default 30.
- 'Textures in Reflections' changed from 'none' to 'color' on all 'Medium' presets. I only saw 0 to 1 fps loss, but this was the one setting I changed in 'Medium Hybrid' all the time
Known Issues:
- Bloom style 0 (old) is broken
- It's a bit bright outside, I'm trying to tune the bloom / brightness balance right for artistic control. In the bloom menu you can change the main exposure value or lower bloom
- water surface and stained glass have a lot of issues, I want to focus on these a lot this month
What's Next: (not all will get done soon)
-trying to fix the issues with 3D material transitions
- Better control of the bloom (style 5), with per mip spectrum control
- Water surface / stained glass needs work
- Fixing 3d Texture material transitions was next on the last Poll after Bloom
- 'Black hole' integrated into 'the End'
- 'water wakes' shader I tested and showed online
- Better Lighting via making the denoiser hdr and offscren diffues multi-bounce caching
- Faster 'Floodfill' preset (like almost double fps, I'm just fighting some settings combinations)
- I want to port the customizability and richness of the 'Just Colored Lighting' shader's colored lighting core, Icarus imported a very old version of it
- local exposure levels
- directly control floodfill contribution on terrain & entities via slider, not just toggle
Downloads are below for Supporters:
versions:
