Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders: A Guide to Freshening Up Minecraft Graphics

Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders (SEUS) overhauls nearly everything about the game’s graphics. With this shader pack, the water looks clear and fluid, plants look alive and seem to sway back and forth as if they were breathing, and nighttime feels even spookier than ever. Certain aspects about vanilla have connected textures, but those pale in comparison to Sonic Ether’s shaders. Bodies of water, whether small or huge and open, look like a uniform piece–just like they do with real bodies of water. On a windy day, trees and tall grass will dance back in forth in the breeze, and Sonic Ether’s shaders incorporate that sense of animation.

The lighting is quite possibly this shader pack’s greatest virtue. The stale, bleak light offered in vanilla does not give a sense of atmosphere like they do in this shaders pack. In fact, most of the light sources in vanilla seems as though they be the same. Yellow light is quite easily the most common, seen from torches, glowstone, lava, fire, and the sun. With this shader pack, color is reintroduced and reborn with each and every light source. Torchlight looks absolutely different from moonlight, just as it should. To add to this, shadows are heavily implemented as well. Something even as small as the grass on the ground can cast a vibrant and deep shadow, perfectly matching up to the sun’s location of course. Daylight is crisp and bright, striking a noticeable difference from the pale light of the moon or torches while in a cave. If all of the game’s lighting features seem the same, Sonic Ether’s shaders is a vibrant way to shake that up.

The sky textures are also one of the most notable features this shaders pack has to offer. The clouds commonly seen in vanilla are pixelated and scattered as if from a predesigned pattern. In this shaders pack, clouds look thin, whispy, and mobile–comparable to the clouds seen just out your window. Looking skyward with this shaders pack will replace those yellow squares with a living image of real clouds. While such realistic clouds may seem to stick out from the traditional pixel aesthetic Minecraft has, the two aspects complement each other quite well. This is most likely due to how Sonic Ether’s shaders overhaul almost everything else about the game, and real clouds go great with real sunshine. Real weather is excellent proof of this.

As with any overhaul texture pack or general shaders pack, it is highly recommended to run Sonic Ether’s shaders on a computer that can handle the graphical overhaul. While these features are beautiful and realistic, older computers may have a hard time keeping up with the vast and vibrant graphical changes.

SEUS PTGI — Screenshots

SEUS Renewed — Screenshots

SEUS Shaders v11.0 — Screenshots

SEUS Versions — Comparison

SEUS — Update Logs

SEUS PTGI HRR Test 2.1

• Fixed a new issue caused by bad placeholder tonemapping that I forgot to revert.
• Fixed issue with HRR where darker areas were less responsive/had more ghosting.
• Added new shader option: Post-Processing Settings > Anti-Aliasing > AA Style. Set to “Responsive” by default, which makes the AA algorithm prefer refreshing the image more quickly when changes occur.

SEUS Renewed 1.0.1

• Improved GI and SSAO.
• Super smooth Temporal AntiAliasing.
• Completely reworked system for day/night cycle based on atmospheric scattering.
• Accurate sunlight color via atmospheric scattering.
• Accurate ambient sky lighting from atmospheric scattering via Spherical Harmonics.
• New atmospheric scattering on distant land for a natural senseofscale.
• New underwater rendering.
• Normal/bump mapping from torch/artificial light.
• Screenspace shadow tracing for better contact shadows.
• Vastly improved performance with long render distance settings.
• Physicallybased specular highlights from sunlight.
• Improved 2D clouds.
• Improved rendering of stained glass.
• New rain/wet effects.
• End and Nether shaders.
• Improved POM and POM selfshadowing.
• Improved shadows.
• Fixed graphical glitches related to TAA occurring on newer NVIDIA graphics hardware/drivers.
• Many more, too many to list here!

SEUS Legacy v11

• Variable Penumbra Soft Shadows.
• Proper rendering of transparent objects.
• Proper light absorption through stained glass.
• Stained glass-colored shadows.
• New volumetric clouds.
• New water rendering.
• Water caustics.
• Crepuscular rays.
• Improved GI
• Vastly improved shadow and GI render distance.
• Automatic exposure adjustment based on average brightness.
• More natural/realistic lighting values.
• Atmospheric scattering.
• New BRDF for diffuse and specular lighting.
• Spider / Enderman’s eyes no longer look glitched.