Super Duper Vanilla Shaders | Cinematic Shaders

Super Duper Vanilla Shaders is a Minecraft shader pack by Eldeston, presented by FlameRender Studios, that recreates the canceled Super Duper Graphics Pack look in Java Edition. It keeps the vanilla aesthetic intact while layering on bloom, dynamic shadows, screen-space reflections, and stylized water. Want a cinematic-but-faithful shader pack? This is one of the most popular choices around, with over six million downloads and counting.

Screenshots

The pack brings the visual style of the canceled Super Duper Graphics Pack to vanilla Minecraft through a stack of graphical effects: dynamic lighting, shadows, and water reflections.

What Is Super Duper Vanilla Shaders?

Super Duper Vanilla is a GLSL shader pack written to evoke the canceled Super Duper Graphics Pack and other classic Minecraft titles. The performance philosophy is explicit: minimize resources and maximize performance first, quality second. It uses six framebuffers to keep things light, and version 1.3.0 brought major speedups over earlier releases.

What the Shader Adds

Lighting and shadows get a real overhaul: HDR lighting, auto exposure, SSAO, volumetric lighting, and shadow mapping with a configurable distance that reduces peter panning, light leaking, and shadow acne. Water picks up screen-space reflections, absorption, foam, normals, underwater caustics, and PBR support. Post-processing covers bloom, depth of field, lens flares, chromatic aberration, motion blur, film grain, a retro filter, and several tonemapping options. Clouds are custom "Aerogel Clouds" (Story Mode-style), double-layered, dynamic, and weather-aware, and the sky gets a full skybox with generated star fields plus dimension-specific lighting for the Nether and the End.

Compatibility and Known Issues

Loaders matter here. Iris is the recommended loader on Windows, Linux (Intel/AMD/NVIDIA), and Apple M1. OptiFine is only partially supported, and OptiFine support is no longer prioritized or maintained. For best results, run the latest Iris for your Minecraft version. Our Iris install guide walks you through it.

The shader plays nicely with Distant Horizons (terrain and water rendering) and the Physics Mod (ocean support). Known-incompatible mods include Astrocraft and Nuit, which throw visual bugs. You can request mod compatibility by opening an issue on the project's GitHub repo. Want to compare options? See our BSL Shaders and Complementary Shaders roundups.

How to Install Super Duper Vanilla Shaders

1. Download the latest release using the table on this page and unzip the download before use.
2. Install Iris for your Minecraft version.
3. Drop the unzipped shader folder into your shaderpacks directory.
4. Enable it in-game from Iris's shader menu.

FAQ

Does it work with OptiFine? Partially, but OptiFine support is deprecated and no longer maintained. Iris is the recommended path.

Is it free? Yes, released under the FlameRender Studios License. The author also accepts donations and is sponsored by Ember Host (code SUPERFLAME for 10% off, with 70% of your first purchase funding development).