Minecraft Shader Tutorials

There’s a total of 5 tutorials I have written so far, and they go up to shadows. These tutorials were written back in 2021, and haven’t been updated since. If you spot an error in these tutorials, please open an issue on the code repository (link is down below). Currently, I do not plan on expanding this tutorial series.

The code for all these tutorials can be found here.

Part 0 - Introduction

Here I will explain a few basics of the graphics in Minecraft and the shader pipeline and how Minecraft shaders work in general.

Part 1 - The Final Program

In this tutorial we explore the most basic fullscreen pass, known as the final pass.

Part 2 - The Gbuffers Programs

Today we will explore the gbuffers and composite shader programs, and we will use our new knowledge to implement basic diffuse lighting

Part 3 - Lighting and Shadows

In this tutorial we will look at implementing the lightmap and shadows.

Part 4 - Advanced Shadow Mapping

In this tutorial I will make our shadows look actually good. I will be covering things like PCF, shadow distortion, and transparent shadows.