10 Best Minecraft shaders for 1.21 (2024)

---

10. Photon

Photon Shader excels in dynamic cloud shading, offering stunning visual changes according to weather and time, especially at sunset, and provides realistic, reflective water surfaces.

🟡Performance Impact: Moderate

9. Nostalgia

This shader pack aims to capture the nostalgic essence of early shader packs from the inception of shadersmod. While honoring this classic style, it also introduces modern advancements and enhances performance.

🟢Performance Impact: Low

8. Oceano

Oceano Shaders are known for their vibrant and colorful water effects, making oceans, rivers, and lakes look particularly stunning.

🟡Performance Impact: Moderate.

7. Bliss

Bliss shaders are a type of Minecraft shader pack known for enhancing the game’s graphics by improving lighting effects, water reflections, textures, atmospheric elements like fog and weather, and offering customization options.

🟡-🔴Performance Impact: Moderate to high.

6. Chocapic13’s Shaders

This shader pack is highly customizable and offers a good balance between visual quality and performance. It features dynamic shadows, realistic water, and beautiful sky effects.

🟢-🟡 Performance Impact: Low to moderate

5. SEUS (Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders)

Known for its realistic lighting and shadows, SEUS is one of the most popular and well-regarded shader packs. It offers high-quality effects that dramatically improve the game’s visuals.

🟡-🔴Performance Impact: Moderate to high

4. Rethinking Voxels

Rethinking Voxels is a shader pack for Minecraft designed to revolutionize the game’s visual aesthetics without heavily compromising performance. It offers a comprehensive suite of graphical enhancements that make the blocky world of Minecraft look more immersive and visually appealing. This shader pack is particularly appreciated for its balance between stunning visuals and performance efficiency.

🔴- Performance Impact: High

3. BSL

BSL Shaders are praised for their beautiful, cinematic visuals and relatively moderate performance impact. They offer stunning lighting, water effects, and overall smoothness.

🟢 Performance Impact: Low

2. Sildur’s Vibrant

Sildur’s shaders are highly versatile, with versions ranging from lightweight to extreme. They provide vibrant colors, enhanced lighting, and water effects, making them suitable for a variety of system configurations.

🟡-🔴Performance Impact: Variable

1. Complementary Shaders

Complementary Shaders are a popular shader pack for Minecraft that builds upon the work of other shader packs, like BSL Shaders, to enhance the game’s visuals without sacrificing too much performance. They are designed to be “complementary” to the game’s existing graphics, enhancing lighting, shadows, and textures to create a more immersive and beautiful world.

🟢-🟡 Performance Impact: Low to moderate