Kappa Shader

Kappa Shader
Project Page	https://rre36.com/kappa-shader
Latest Version	4.0
Last Updated	2021-04-11
Visual Style	Realistic
Performance Cost	High
License	[{{{LicenseURL}}} {{{LicenseType}}}]

The Kappa Shader is the high-end shaderpack in the lineup and tries to deliver the most appealing results without resorting to complex techniques like voxelisation. It is generally considered a realistic shaderpack, although it takes its own shortcuts and liberties due to which it is by no means accurate in the sense of exactly recreating real life lighting configurations.

Key Features

Kappa Shader is known for its advanced and fairly unique Volumetric Clouds, which have been a cornerstone of its atmospherics and outdoor-visuals for a couple of major versions now.

Version 3.0 introduced Screenspace Path Tracing (SSPT), which is used for light emission and reflection to allow for a wider variety of lighting colors within the screenspace limitations.

Configuration Guide

This section covers configuration setups for common scenarios.

Resourcepack Support

Kappa Shader supports material rendering that is driven by the resourcepack, which includes specular reflections, normalmaps and parallax occlusion mapping (also known as POM). This works best with resource packs which support physically based materials (as part of Physically Based Rendering (PBR)) through the labPBR Standard. This enables the usage of:

• Rough or smooth specular reflections depending on the material
• Added perceived depth and object detail through normalmaps
• Illusion of detailed material geometry through POM (crevices on bricks for example)

Before proceeding with the steps below, make sure that both "Normal Maps" and "Specular Maps" are On in the shaderpack selection screen. You will get visual issues if one or both of them are off!

Enabling Normalmap-Support

1. Make sure your resource pack has Normalmaps
2. In the Kappa Shader Options: Terrain > Normalmaps: On
3. In the Kappa Shader Options: Lighting > Directional Lightmaps: On

Enabling Parallax Occlusion Mapping

1. Make sure your resource pack supports POM
2. In Kappa Shader Options: Terrain > Parallax Occlusion Mapping > Enable: On

Enabling Resourcepack Reflections

1. Ensure that your resourcepack supports materials as defined by the labPBR standard
2. In the Kappa Shader Options: Terrain > Reflections > Resourcepack Reflections: On

Performance Tweaks

Choose a Profile from the 5 pre-defined profiles which provide the simplest starting point for configuring Kappa shader options for your hardware, found in the first level Shader Options menu:

1. Low
2. Medium
3. High
4. Ultra
5. Extreme

Simply chose the profile which you think matches your hardware by clicking on the Profile button to cycle through the options. Then click 'Done' to apply. The Ultra and Extreme profiles are demanding at higher monitor resolutions and Minecraft render distances, and require high-end PC hardware.

If your selected profile doesn't allow you to achieve your desired frame-rate consider moving to the next lower profile.

Once you have a baseline profile that matches your hardware you can use the information in this Wiki to fine-tune the visual quality and performance settings.

Common Questions

This is a list of frequently asked questions and their answers

Q: How do I get the best clouds?

A: Clouds are configured in their own sub-section of the Atmosphere settings. Cumulus clouds are the lower 'fluffy' clouds and Cirrus clouds are the higher 'wispy' clouds. For maximum visual effect both should be enabled, as should cloud shadows. However there is some performance cost, particularly for Cumulus (volumetric) clouds and cloud shadows, so you may need to experiment to optimise for your hardware.

• To enable cumulus volumetric 'fluffy' clouds: Atmosphere > Clouds > Volumetric Clouds > Enabled: On
• To enable cirrus planar 'wispy' clouds: Atmosphere > Clouds > Planar Clouds > Cirrus Clouds: On

More detailed explanation can be found in the Clouds settings.

Q: How do I get path tracing / ray tracing?

Q: At night-time lights are very bright from light sources (such as torches or lanterns). Is there a way to adjust that?

Minecraft is running slow, how can I speed up the frame-rate?

See the performance tweaks section

Full Settings Documentation

These are all available settings of this shaderpack. They are ordered by (sub-)screen as they are accessible in-game. This list is only accommodating the latest release, with eventual overlaps with older versions.

Atmosphere

Settings that control the visual appearance of atmospheric effects, which includes atmosphere properties, clouds and water.

Rainbows	Allows you to enable or disable the appearance of rainbows after rainy weather. Comes at virtually no performance cost.
Sun Path Angle	This setting allows you to control the rotation angle of the sun over the course of the day. Greater values allow you to mimic the sun angles of places that are further away from the equator.
World Time Animation	This option makes atmospherics be animated using the world time. This applies to clouds, fog and water and allows you to get the same visual results across multiple players on a server for example. Comes at no performance cost.
Air Coefficients
Rayleigh Color and Density Controls	These settings control the tint and overall density of molecules causing rayleigh scattering to happen (the thing that makes the sky blue and the sun red at sunrise/-set in layman's terms). Changing the tint allows you to simulate a different kind of atmosphere with a different response to sunlight.
Mie Color and Density Controls	These controls allow you change the tint and intensity of mie scattering, which is caused by molecules that are large enough to scatter light virtually identical regardless of its wavelength.
Ozone Color and Density Controls	These settings let you control the tint and intensity of light absorption caused by ozone in the air. Higher intensities can also be helpful to achieve more vibrant sunrises and -sets.
Mist Color and Density Controls	These settings allow you to tint and scale the volumetric mist you can observe at sunrise and night.
Clouds
Target Resolution	This controls the resolution the clouds are internally being rendered in (when using temporal upscaling, this is the resolution the clouds get temporally upscaled to before being scaled to the screen). Directly affects performance cost of clouds, which means that higher values are more expensive to run.
Temporal Upscaling	This allows you to enable Temporal Checkerboard Upscaling on the clouds, which vastly improves their performance at the cost of a minor loss of visual fidelity.
Cloud Reflections	This allows you to enable or disable the rendering of clouds in reflections (most commonly water). Comes at a small performance cost.
Cloud Shadows	This enables the clouds to cast shadows onto terrain and fog, leading to much more authentic and atmospheric lighting. Comes at a moderate performance cost.
Volumeteric Clouds	Settings for the Volumetric Clouds, which are the "fluffy" cumulus clouds [still to resolve: how to signify a level 3 menu in these tables]
Planar Clouds	Settings for the higher altitude "wispy" cirrus clouds which are not volumetric and have a minimal performance cost
Fog
Volumetric Fog
Adaptive Steps
Density
Mist Altitude
Mist Mie Anisotropy
Advanced Mist Shading
Maximum Distance
Sea Level
Mist Falloff
Mist Lighting Steps
Fog Smoothing
Double Pass Smoothing
Sky
Scattering Iterations
Airmass Iterations
Illuminance Strength
Multiscattering Strength
Accurate Transmittance	'On' to have the Air Coefficients apply to light travelling through the air. Gives the sky and mist more colorful effects, for a mild performance cost. 'Off' removes these atmospheric colour and mist filters and is faster.
Alternative Ozone Curve
Water
Water Volume Controls
Water Color and Scattering Controls
Wave Controls
Nether
Nether Smoke Enabled
Nether Smoke Density
Nether Smoke Emission
Nether Smoke Emission Multiplier
Nether Smoke Density
End
End Smoke Glow
End Smoke Glow Dynamic
End Smoke Glow Strength

Lighting

Settings that allow adjustment to the properties of light and shadow.

Directional Lightmaps	Only applicable for Resource Packs with PBR and Normal Map enabled. 'On' for higher quality 3D detail at some performance cost (recommended). 'Off' reduces render quality and increases frame-rate.
Colors
Sunlight Controls
Moonlight Controls
Skylight Controls
Blocklight Strength
Blocklight Temperature	The color temperature of emitting blocks. Lower values give a warmer orange light, higher values a colder white light
Min Ambient Light	Effects exposure in dark spaces. Reducing the value makes shadows and dark spaces darker. Increasing the value gives better night vision.
Direct Light
Shadowmap Resolution	The resolution of the shadow map. Lower values give coarser shadows and faster performance. Higher Values give more detailed and crisp shadows with some performance cost
Variable Penumbra Shadows	'Off' for faster simpler shadows. 'On' for more realistic shadow edges with a soft penumbra effect - most relevant for sunlight shadows
vpsSize	Slider to make the variable penumbra shadows effect area larger or smaller
Filter Iterations
Contact Shadows	'On' ensures there is no gap between objects and their shadows (recommended). 'Off' may be faster but can leave a shadow gap glitch.
Subsurface Scatter	Setting for subsurface scattering of light with translucent blocks. 'Off' 'Hardcoded' 'Hardcoded+lab' (default) 'labPBR Only'
Indirect Light
Indirect Lighting Resolution
Filtering	'Off' does not smooth the lighting across blocks and can leave a visible grid of block illumination indoors and underground; faster. 'On' smooth lighting; slower
SSPT	When enabled Screen-Space Path-Tracing improves quality of reflections from light-sources which are in frame.
Samples per Pixel
Lightmap Blending
Long Range SSPT
Bounces
Emission Distance
Emission Mode	'Hardcoded', 'Hardcoded + labPBR', 'labPBR only'
Texture AO	Texture ambient occlusion
SSAO Fallback	Allows the shader to use screen space ambient occlusion when SSPT is not available

Terrain

Options that control how solid surfaces are rendered, which includes important things like reflections.

• Reflections - settings for how reflections are handled [ relevant always or only when SSRT ON? What is BRDF? What are the key options here? I tend to just leave as default]
• Parallax Occlusion Mapping - enabling POM enables 3D textures, a significant visual upgrade on specific objects close to the player with resource packs that support it.
• Normalmap Support
• Format
• Vertex Attribute Fix - may need to enable if POM creates glitchy artefacts
• Wetness mode
• Wind Effects - disabling stops the grass and the leaves waving in the breeze
• Intensity - determines the strength of the waving in the wind effect

Camera

Settings for how the virtual camera of Kappa Shader sees the world.

• Sensor Width
• F-Stops - only relevant when Depth of Field (DoF) is enabled. Lower values give a narrow/short focus range which makes the image focus at one depth at the centre of the screen, and blurry nearer and further from the player. Higher values give a longer focus range, so that more of the image is clearly in focus at one time.
• Anamorph Stretch Ratio
• Bloom
• Depth of Field - enable to create photographic bokeh focus effects. [Arguably better for screenshots than for gameplay?]
• Exposure - settings for adjusting the auto-exposure of the Kappa camera
• Lens Flare - enabling Lens Flare and Halo replicates the effect you get from pointing a real glass lens at a strong light source, for example the sun
• Motionblur - 'On' smooths/blurs the transitions between frames and is good for users with lower FPS. 'Off' may be better for higher FPS
• Vignette - 'On' makes the edges of the screen a bit darker replicating how older cameras captured light.

Post

These settings allow you to change elements of the color grading and other post-processing effects like anti-aliasing.

System Requirements

Minimum
CPU	Allocated Memory	Graphics Card	Recommended Resolution	Operating System
AMD FX 4000 Series or Intel Core i3 3000 Series	2GB	AMD RX 460 or nVidia GeForce GTX 760	1280x720	Windows or Linux
Recommended for Medium Settings
CPU	Allocated Memory	Graphics Card	Recommended Resolution	Operating System
AMD Ryzen 1000 Series or Intel Core i5 4000 Series	4GB	AMD RX 480 or nVidia GeForce GTX 1060	1920x1080	Windows or Linux
Recommended for High Settings
CPU	Allocated Memory	Graphics Card	Recommended Resolution	Operating System
AMD Ryzen 1000 Series or Intel Core i5 4000 Series	4GB	AMD RX Vega 56 or nVidia GeForce GTX 1070	1920x1080	Windows or Linux

The Default settings are equivalent to High.

Mesa 20 drivers or newer are recommended for AMD configurations using Linux. Intel Graphics are not guaranteed to be compatible.