Vibrant Visuals

This feature is exclusive to Bedrock Edition.^{[note 1]}

 

This article describes a feature planned for Java Edition.^[1][2]

 

It has not appeared in any development versions yet, but is planned to be included in a future update.

Vibrant Visuals is a graphics mode that aims to improve the visual looks of Minecraft by adding directional lighting, physically based textures, pixel-aligned shadows, atmospheric sky, environmental effects, and various other visual features based on photorealism. It is built around a physically based rendering pipeline used for deferred lighting and ray tracing.^[3][4] It runs locally on the player's device, and can be enabled in the player's settings rather than world specific settings.^[5]

Most configurations and textures can be customized using resource packs, and various tagged Marketplace add-ons make use of custom Vibrant Visuals packs.

Vibrant Visuals affects only the graphical appearance of Minecraft; it does not affect gameplay. However, enabling Vibrant Visuals on lower-end devices (especially with high render distance and higher graphics settings) can decrease game performance significantly, which can affect the game experience.

Features

Physically based rendering

Vibrant Visuals uses physically based rendering (PBR), which simulates realistic lighting behaviors between different surface materials. This is achieved by creating different texture maps for every block, entity, item, and particle, which define specific characteristics of the surface material.^[6] A texture set is used to specify these texture maps in a resource pack.^[7] Four maps — metalness, emissive, roughness, and subsurface scattering (collectively known as MERS) — define the material's properties. Each property in MERS is assigned to RGBA image (four channel), such as red to metalness, green to emissive, blue to roughness, and alpha to subsurface.

Reflections

Object reflections are heavily affected by their metalness and roughness properties. Metallic surfaces reflect light directly and tint that reflection with their own color (like gold and copper). Non-metallic surfaces like grass, dirt, and tree barks show more solid color and less reflection. A surface with low roughness is very smooth, resulting in sharp, mirror-like reflections, compared with high roughness that results in blurry, diffused reflections.

The game uses screen space reflections (SSR) and image-based lighting (IBL) to create dynamic reflections which appear on these surfaces.^[8] SSR generates reflections by reusing what's already visible on the screen. They are limited by the objects and parts of the world that are currently visible in the camera's view, which can cause reflections to fade or disappear near the edges of the screen. In contrast, IBL reflections, used to reflect clouds, aren't limited by what is already displayed on the screen but often appear low resolution and distorted. They use cube maps, which are affected by environmental lighting and atmospheric scattering.^[9]

Most blocks and entities in Vibrant Visuals with high metalness only reflect light sources and do not completely mirror areas. Water surfaces are fully reflective and properly mirror the area surrounding them. The reflection quality can be configured under the video settings, which affects their resolution and distance at which they appear.

Surface glows

Pixels can appear to glow in the dark environment through the emissive texture map. This map defines which parts of a texture should be self-illuminated. It uses the green color channel in the MERS texture; areas of the map that are solid green will glow at full intensity, with different shades of the color affecting their intensity, while black areas will be unaffected by the emissive property. Emissive surfaces do not cast light onto surrounding blocks or entities, and therefore do not cast proper shadows. However, their glow remains visible even in complete darkness, making them appear bright and distinct. They also produce light bloom effect, which makes their color bleed into the surrounding areas.

Some entities and blocks — like drowned, spiders, sculk, certain dropped items, and firefly particles — use emissive texture map and produce glowing effect. This effect is often contributed by their natural block lighting (like torches and glowstone), which makes the glow appear more intense and realistic.

Subsurface scattering

The fourth map, subsurface scattering, simulates an effect of light shining on translucent surfaces, like leaves.^[10] This effect is applied to blocks exposed to sky lighting, and blends to roughly one block deep on vertical surfaces. Subsurface scattering cannot be used in conjunction with metalness on the same pixel on an object; instead, only one effect will be applied.

Directional lighting and shadows

The primary light sources in Vibrant Visuals are global directional lights, including the sun and the moon in the Overworld, and End flashes in the End.^[8] Depending on the location of the light source in the sky, they illuminate all objects directly exposed to them. The texture maps define how this affects objects, such as how the light is reflected and recolored. Light also shines through glass panes and other supported transparent blocks, where it has the same effects on objects behind it.

When the camera is looking at a bright object, either directional lighting or emissive textures, the whole view gets darkened, which gradually fades away when looking at a dark object.

Directional light sources cast shadows on all objects, including held items on the HUD. The object that creates the shadow and the location of the light source affect the shape, size, and direction of the shadow. Unlike shadows in most games, shadows are pixelated to match the resolution of other textures and align with the pixel grid. Shadows can be created by any block that can obstruct lighting, most particles, and entities, including players. Animated objects, like animated player skins or the tentacles of a ghast, create animated shadows as well. Shadows are rendered at a lower quality at higher distances, which can be configured in the settings.

End flash

The End flash is an effect in the End sky that in Bedrock Edition is exclusive to Vibrant Visuals. End flashes occur once every 30 seconds at random spots above the horizon. As a directional light source, End flashes tint block lighting purple and create shadow and reflection effects. Each flash lasts between 5 and 19 seconds, with fading at the beginning and the end, while also producing a sound. Flashes can be disabled in the accessibility settings.

Colored lighting

This section describes an experimental feature for a future update.

 

This feature is not enabled in-game by default and requires enabling the "Render Dragon Features for Creators" setting in the "Experiments" section in Bedrock Edition.

If the "Render Dragon Features for Creators" experiment is enabled in Minecraft Preview, and "point lights" are turned on in the settings, light-emitting blocks like torches emit directional light and cast dynamic shadows as well. The light is emitted from a single point at the center of a block, hence the name, and the strength is affected by the block's lighting. This light is colored, and blends additively. The following blocks are affected by point lighting:

Block	Color	Light level
Torch	#f39a5e	14
Lantern		15
Copper Lantern (all oxidized and waxed variants)	#e8c398
Soul Lantern	#36d9e6	10
Soul Torch
Redstone Torch	#c32c1f	7
Copper Torch	#86ca59	14
Copper Lantern (unwaxed, unaffected)		15
Candle (all variants)	#d3852b	3, 6, 9, or 12
Candle Cake (all variants)		3
Blue Torch	#0000ff	14
Purple Torch	#ff00ff
Red Torch	#ff0000
Green Torch	#00ff00
End Rod	#da73de
Sea Pickle (all waterlogged variants)	#b0dad3	6, 9, 12, or 15

The quality of point lighting and the shadows created by point lights can be adjusted in the settings, or turned off.

Enabling this for more objects may reduce the performance and affect gameplay noticeably.

In addition to point lighting, all other blocks with block lighting create static colored light. For a full list of colors, see Light § Light-emitting blocks.

Other light sources

Without directional light sources, objects are lit by ambient lighting, to prevent them from rendering pitch black. Ambient lighting has a dimension-dependent strength (0.02 in the Overworld, 0.5 in the Nether, and 0.125 in the End), which affects objects based on the texture sets. For example, blocks have a red tint in the Nether, where no directional lighting is available.

The sky also contributes as a light source, which can also be reflected by objects. Depending on the exposure to sky light, shadows created by directional lighting can appear darker and more visible or blend in more with bright areas.

Environmental effects

Each biome and dimension has unique effects for lighting and color that greatly affect the scene. Biome-dependent effects include atmospherics, color grading, fog, and lighting (excluding point lights). In transitions between biomes, the game automatically blends the effects.^[11]

Atmospherics

The sky color of a biome in Vibrant Visuals is defined at the horizon and the zenith, which are variable.^[12] When these colors are different, the sky will blend these colors between the horizon and the zenith. For example, deserts and badlands have a light orange/green sky color, snowy biomes have a light blue or white sky color, and pale gardens have a gray sky color. The color and intensity of sunlight and moonlight are affected by the biome as well.

Different color grading settings distinguish biomes with different temperatures, making especially cold biomes appear gray/blue, and warm biomes colored orange. Color grading is applied as a post-processing effect to the whole image, including blocks, light, and the sky.

Vibrant Visuals enhances all fog effects that change depending on the environment.^[13] Certain biomes, like swamps and pale gardens, have denser volumetric fog effects with unique colors and strength depending on the height, and directional lighting. Directional lighting can be scattered by strong fog, and the heaviest fog can greatly lower the view distance to only a few chunks, or even block the sun entirely. With decreased effects from directional lighting, shadows and reflections are less visible, and blocks in the distance appear half-transparent and faded. Volumetric fog can be disabled in the settings, and the quality of light shafts and distance fading can be adjusted. With the Henyey-Greenstein G phase function, Vibrant Visuals fog can create light shafts for scattering in air and water.

Most biomes, including unused biomes, use default settings for fog, atmospherics, lighting, and color grading, or share a common setting with a specific climate, while some biomes have unique settings.

• Fog types are split into default, semi-humid, and humid. For a full list of biomes using semi-humid and humid fog, see Fog § Volumetric fog.
• Color grading is split into default, warmish, coolish, and cold.
• Atmospherics and lighting are split into default and warmish. Biomes with cold or coolish color grading use default atmospherics and lighting.

• The End sky uses unique black/purple atmospherics, but this is rendered on top of the End sky texture, and a dense purple volumetric fog effect is visible during an End flash. The End has unique lighting, but default color grading.
• The sky in all Nether biomes uses the same colors as without Vibrant Visuals, with the exception that the zenith is slightly brighter than the horizon, different for each biome. All Nether biomes use the same lighting and default color grading.
• Swamps, mushroom fields, ice spikes, pale gardens, and dark forests all have unique fog, lighting, atmospherics, and color grading settings.
• Deserts and all badlands have two unique lighting, atmospherics, and color grading settings, but use default volumetric fog.
• Mangrove swamps have unique lighting, atmospherics, and color grading but use humid fog.
• Lush caves use warmish color grading and humid fog, but default atmospherics and lighting.

• 
  The sky in warm biomes.^{[note 2]}
• 
  The sky in temperate biomes.^{[note 3]}
• 
  The sky with coolish color grading.^{[note 4]}
• 
  The sky with cold color grading.^{[note 5]}
• 
  The sky in a mangrove swamp.
• 
  The sky in lush caves.
• 
  The sky in deserts, desert hills, and desert lakes.
• 
  The sky in mesa biomes.^{[note 6]}
• 
  The sky in swamps and swamp hills.
• 
  The sky in mushroom fields and mushroom field shores.
• 
  The sky in ice spikes.
• 
  The sky in a pale garden.
• 
  The sky in a dark forest and dark forest hills.
• 
  The sky in the End.

Global directional light sources are affected by rayleigh scattering and mie scattering, which change depending on the object's position in the sky. The sun and moon themselves create a glow in the sky around them, and cast light beams depending on fog effects. These light beams can fall through transparent blocks, and can be scattered into smaller light beams with shadows by blocks and entities.

All atmospheric effects gradually change during the time of day, for example certain scattering effects only apply during sunrise or sunset, and the sky and sun colors are constantly changing. During sunrise, sky colors gradually change from black with weak light from the moon and stars, to a more vibrant light created by the sun and changed by the atmosphere. The sunrise and sunset also change the color of sunlight to a more orange/red color, which gradually fades away during the day.

Clouds

Clouds have more detail and additional light on the edges, making large clouds appear much darker than smaller clouds. Furthermore, clouds can block sunlight or moonlight and cast shadows on the ground. When a cloud covers the sun or moon, the sky and the environment darken and change colors. The color of clouds also changes with sky colors, for example, in different biomes, and during weather events.

The cloud distance can be adjusted in the Vibrant Visuals options.

Weather effects

The weather influences environmental light effects to make them match more with the set colors of classic graphics modes. During rainfall, the sky appears dark grey, but the biome effects still partially apply, making rain look unique for every biome. Thunderstorms increase this effect and make the sky even darker. During snowfall, the sky turns into a unique shade of light gray with biome effects much less visible. During a combination of snowfall and thunder, the sky is much darker at the horizon, but the light blue/light gray colors are still visible higher in the sky. The sun and moon are not visible during weather events, and don't cast shadows on blocks or entities. However, at the location of the sun and moon, a brighter glow is visible in the sky.

In dry biomes, rainfall does not affect sky or clouds at all and is indistinguishable from clear weather, unlike without Vibrant Visuals. Thunderstorms slightly darken the sky and clouds, but the sun and moon are still visible and appear darker.

Volumetric fog effects are heavily increased during rain, snowfall, or thunderstorms, and change their colors according to the sky color. The regular biome fog is unaffected.

Water effects

The water texture and inside color are rendered separately from other blocks and objects.^[14] Small bodies of water appear almost invisible, and large bodies are more transparent in general, with a less saturated blue color compared to classic graphics modes. Biome-specific water colors are not applied to the surface, but this has been announced to be added in a future update.^[15]

When the player's eye level is inside water, volumetric fog effects are created, which change depending on the depth, the time the player has been in the water, the biome, and sky effects. Without sky light underwater, the fog color is pitch black, and the only light created by the blocks is much less effective. When the player is in an underwater area without a skylight, looking at an area exposed to a skylight, the textures of blocks are not visible, and everything is colored cyan. The effect of Snell's window appears when looking at the water surface from below.

The sun and moon aren't visible from below the water, but a blurred and colored light source can be seen in the direction of the sun and moon, and creates light beams falling through the water. These light beams can be obstructed and scattered by objects and fog effects. When directional lighting hits a surface underwater, water caustics are projected on that surface. Water caustics are randomly animated, and certain parts appear brighter than others, depending on the light projecting the water caustics.

• 
  Sunbeams underwater.
• 
  A dark aquifer.
• 
  Water caustics in a desert. Note the caustics projected on the dry sand behind the waterfall on the right.
• 
  Water caustics as seen from underwater.
• 
  Shadows cast by coral structures underwater.

Post processing effects

Post-processing effects are visual elements that are not directly produced by either PBR or direct lighting sources, but are instead applied after the scene is fully rendered. There are multiple post-processing effects applied by Vibrant Visuals, such as:

• Bloom which appears on emissive textures and light sources. It creates a soft and hazy aura of light around the glowing object, with the colors bleeding out around the object. The effect's intensity can be configured on the video settings.
• Upscaling which is done from low-resolution scene renders. The game usually renders the scene at a lower resolution and upscales it to the native resolution to improve video performance. This effect can be configured on the video settings, where the player can set between TAAU (Temporal Anti-Aliasing Upsampling) and Bilinear mode, and the final resolution quality. Generally, TAAU makes the game use multiple frames to create a crisper upscaled frame, while Bilinear stretches the frame to fit the screen, more suitable for low-end devices.
• Color grading which controls the saturation, contrast, gain, gamma, and offset of the final scene.^[16]
  • There are three parameters that apply the effects based on the pixels' brightness condition: shadows (darkest pixels); highlights (brightest pixels); and midtones (pixels close to the average luminescence of the scene), each increasing or decreasing the five effects for red, green, and blue.
  • There is an additional temperature-based color grading which makes the scene look "warmer" with more yellow and orange colors, and "cooler" with more blue color.
  • 14 different color grading effects are applied based on the biome.
• Tone mapping is also used to remap the colors from HDR to SDR for televisions and monitors that support limited dynamic range.^[16]

• 
  The bloom effect around the sun during sunrise.
• 
  A comparison of a firefly bush with bloom set to 0% (bottom) and 100% (top).

Panorama

An exclusive panorama is shown when using Vibrant Visuals.

Applying

Vibrant Visuals can be toggled on in the video settings in the graphics mode dropdown menu. The graphics mode can only be changed in-game when "Allow In-Game Graphics Mode Switching" is turned on, but this can have negative impact on performance and not all devices support this.

If playing multiplayer, not everyone needs to have it activated to play in the world; one player could have it activated, whilst other players could have it inactive since it's a local setting.

Vibrant Visuals options

The quality of specific features from Vibrant Visuals as well as some technical options can be adjusted in the Vibrant Visuals options, below the graphics mode setting. These options can be preset to the "Favor Performance" for a better experience on lower-end devices, or "Favor Visuals" for a higher quality of Vibrant Visuals on high-end devices. The options can also be adjusted individually.

The render distance for Vibrant Visuals is controlled by the "Deferred Render Distance" slider instead of the regular render distance slider. This slider can be set between 8-28 chunks (may be lower on some devices), but can be changed to any value chunks in options.txt. Higher render distances than 128 chunks will result in the game not loading any chunks further than 128 chunks away from the player, and even higher render distances can lead to glitched visual effects or crashes. Lower render distances than 8 chunks will result in the game not loading any chunks further away than the set render distance, but chunks won't be unloaded until they are further away than 8 chunks. A render distance of 0 chunks results in no chunks being loaded, but entities and particles are still visible.

The regular brightness setting is not available when using Vibrant Visuals, but the brightness can be calibrated in a separate menu in the Vibrant Visuals options. This also affects the brightness of the panorama.

Configurations

All options related to Vibrant Visuals have configurations for specific devices. The default settings for each preset, and the renderer configurations per setting differs between devices. The setting configurations can be found in  Content/data/renderer as JSON files, with all renderer configurations located in a "lods" sub-directory. These files contain all available options per device, and a platform_configuration.json file contains all defaults for each generic graphics setting. There are separate configurations for three Android memory tiers, Xbox One (X) and Xbox Series X|S, all PS4 and PS5 consoles, three iOS devices memory tiers, and four Windows memory tiers.

There are also configurations for ChromeOS and Nintendo Switch, indicating that Vibrant Visuals may become available on those devices in the future.

This directory also contains configurations for features that are not customizable in resource packs, including tone mapping curves, deferred shading parameters, light clustering, luminance configurations, weather effects, .bin material files, and an unknown brdf_lut.png image, seemingly a colormap.

Availability

Vibrant Visuals is available to use on the following platforms:^[17]

Platform	Supported devices
	Graphics card and graphics driver with support for DirectX 12 with feature level 12.1. For Intel GPUs, Intel graphics driver 31.0.101.3430 or later is required for Minecraft to run on DirectX 12.[18]
	Devices running on Adreno 640, Mali-G68, Mali-G77, Xclipse 530 or higher. Enabled by default on Adreno 740, Mali-G615, Mali-G720, Xclipse 920 or higher.
	A12 Bionic or higher: iPhone XR or later iPhone SE (2020) or later iPhone Air (2025)
	A12 Bionic, A12X Bionic, M1 or higher: iPad (2020) or later iPad mini (2019) or later iPad Air (2019) or later iPad Pro (2018) or later
	Xbox One (disabled by default) Xbox One S (disabled by default) Xbox One X Xbox Series X Xbox Series S
	PlayStation 4 (disabled by default) PlayStation 4 Slim (disabled by default) PlayStation 4 Pro PlayStation 5 PlayStation 5 Slim PlayStation 5 Pro

Vibrant Visuals is not currently supported on ChromeOS devices, Fire tablets, or Nintendo Switch consoles. Mojang Studios intends to bring Vibrant Visuals, either fully or partially, to as many devices as possible.^[19]

Some servers may disable Vibrant Visuals during the game using disable-client-vibrant-visuals in server.properties, even when available on singleplayer. All featured servers besides The Hive and Mob Maze have disabled Vibrant Visuals, although this restriction can be circumvented by using third-party modification software.^[20] Minecraft Realms has Vibrant Visuals enabled.

Vibrant Visuals has limited compatibility with existing resource packs that are a part of an add-on. Resource packs without the pbr capability restrict the graphics mode to Fancy or lower. When a pack has metadata.product_type set to addon Vibrant Visuals can be enabled, regardless of the pbr capability. Custom textures from the add-on's resource pack default to 0% metalness, 0% emissiveness, 100% roughness, and 0% subsurface scattering.

Customization

Vibrant Visuals can be customized with a resource pack. A pack with pbr capability in its manifest.json can define PBR for each individual texture with a texture set.^[21] They can also configure light sources, atmospheric effects, volumetric fog and light shafts, color grading and tone mapping, and many more.^[3]

Vibrant Visuals is also compatible with resource packs that are designed for ray tracing (with raytraced capability). All ray tracing resource packs only support MER (metalness, emissive, and roughness) for its textures, and these can only be applied for blocks only.^[7] Vibrant Visuals resource packs however, support MER and subsurface scattering (MERS), and its textures can be applied for entities, mobs, particles, and items.

Global lighting, atmospherics, color grading, cubemaps, and water effects can be customized for each biome.^[11] Multiple JSON configuration files can be stored in each directory as long as they have different names and identifiers, which are not the same as the global configurations. To apply settings to a biome, the identifier of the JSON file must be included in the client biome JSON file in  biomes, in the minecraft:setting_identifier components. The configurations will be blended automatically on biome borders, except for tone mapping, orbital offset, caustics, and waves enabled/disabled, which should use the same settings globally.

Resource packs that customize Vibrant Visuals can quickly be created with Bedrock Editor. The Vibrant Visuals Settings window allows most JSON configurations to be changed in a graphical environment, and the effects are directly visible in-game. All settings are not saved, but each JSON file can be copied to the clipboard, or a resource pack with all settings can be auto-generated. Once generated, Download Resource Pack will import the pack in mctools.dev, where the pack can be directly exported or further customized.

Biome-dependent settings cannot be changed until Bedrock Edition 26.0​^[upcoming], where settings for existing biomes or configurations can be changed, and even new configurations can be added. A biome can be selected with Target Biome (Target Biomes By Location selects the player's current biome), if custom biomes are used the namespace can be changed to disambiguate. Next, the Config Set for Biome selects which settings file is used for the selected configurations. This allows to reorganize vanilla settings in a biome, and the raw JSON text of the client biome file can be copied. A new configuration file can also be created, with a custom namespace and identifier (both cannot have spaces), and it can be auto-filled by inserting the raw JSON content in the Inport button.

Texture sets

Textures from blocks, entities, items (held, displayed, and dropped), and particles use texture sets to calculate how light behaves on the texture, regarding reflections and emissiveness.^[6] Texture sets cannot be customized with Bedrock Editor. On top of the regular RGBA texture maps, which control the colors and transparency, Vibrant Visuals uses six new maps for other properties of each pixel, including metalness, emissive, roughness, subsurface scattering, normal, and height maps. The first four are all created in one file, collectively known as MERS values (or MER without subsurface scattering).

• Metalness is a grayscale texture map that affect how metallic pixels look, which makes them more reflective. Pixels can use metalness values between black (non-metallic) and white (completely metalic), where metalness for values in between is affected by the brightness.
• The grayscale emissive map is used for pixels that emit light. Black pixels do not emit light at all, and any brighter values result in emissive textures. Pure white pixels are emissive at its brightest. The desaturation of the pixel's colors can be adjusted per biome in  lighting.
• Subsurface scattering is an effect created by light shining on transcluent surfaces.^[10] It is a grayscale map where brighter pixels allow more subsurface scattering. This texture map cannot be used in conjunction with the metalness map; if both are provided only the highest value will be applied (subsurface scattering when tied).
• Roughness is a grayscale texture map affecting how "rough" pixels are, which can block reflection effects. Black pixels are very smooth and allow all reflections caused by the metalness map, while white pixels only allow (distorted) light reflection.
• The normal map is an RGB texture map which affect the depth of the pixel and how light rays are reflected. The RGB elements correspond to XYZ coordinates of the pixel, with (128, 128, 255) being completely flat.
• Height maps are similar to normal maps but in grayscale, allowing less possible textures. Black pixels appear to extrude inward to the object, and white pixels extrude outward. Combining black and white pixels next to each other can create height variation on which light can reflect, while creating a shadow behind. Heightmaps cannot be used together with normal maps.

Texture maps can be quickly created using Blockbench,^[22] which may require plugins to customize textures. The MERS textures need to be placed, preferably named block/particle/entity/item ID_mers (or _mer if only using MER maps for compatibility with ray tracing), in  textures, in the sub-directory containing textures for the object type. Texture maps can be stored in .tga, .png, .jpg, and .jpeg formats. To make the game replace the default textures with a custom texture set, it needs to be specified in a texture set JSON file, on file for each texture, located in the same sub-directory as the texture itself.^[7]

Instead of creating texture maps, the JSON file can also be used to apply specific MERS values to the whole texture.

texture_set.json format

Fallback values

When a resource pack does not contain one or more texture maps, the missing texture maps will default to the vanilla textures instead. However, for custom textures as part of an add-on, all pixels default to values specified in a customizable JSON file in  pbr.^[23]

global.json format

Lighting

Various types of light sources can be customized, which are split into global lighting and local lighting in the  lighting and  local_lighting directories.^[8] Global light settings are defined per biome and require different JSON files for each biome or set of biomes and need to be specified in  biome.client_biome.json. Local light settings are applied for individual blocks specified in one JSON file. Local lighting currently only includes point lights, while global lighting includes directional lights, emissive textures, ambient light, and sky light.

• Directional lighting includes the sun and moon (orbital), and End flash. For each object, the total brightness can be adjusted, and the color of that lighting. This affects the sky and atmospheric scattering, and all objects lit by the directional light source, which are both also affected by texture sets, atmospheric settings, and color grading.
  • All values for directional lighting in the JSON file and in Bedrock Editor support multiple key frames for different in-game times. See § Atmospherics below for more information.

  • 

    For the sun and the moon, the orbital offset can be customized, which affects how the orbit is rotated towards the south (can be rotated 360 degrees). This can also be keyframed, which allows to customize the position of the sun and moon depending on the in-game time.
• Emissive lights are produced by blocks, entities, and particles with emissive pixels in their texture set. The desaturation of the color of the pixel can be adjusted per biome.
• Ambient lighting is always applied and makes blocks visible when there are no other light sources. The strength and color of this light can be adjusted.
• Sky lighting is applied to surfaces exposed to the sky. The intensity can be adjusted, which affects how dark shadows are compared to surfaces lit by directional lighting.
• Static lights are local light sources set per block, available only in the "Render Dragon Features for Creators" experiment in Minecraft Preview.‌^{[until BE 26.10]} They do not create specular highlights or dynamic shadows and are fixed in space and in brightness. It can only be used by blocks with "regular" lighting, which affects the strength. The color of this static light can be customized. When multiple static lights with different colors are overlapping in an area, the total luminance will add up.
• Point lights are local directional light sources in blocks, only available in the "Render Dragon Features for Creators" experiment. Point lights are created by a single point in the center of the block, with a specific color similar to the color for global directional lighting. Static lights are automatically also added to blocks with point lighting. The strength of the point light is affected by the block lighting of the block.

global.json format

Note: The global.json file does not override any vanilla lighting settings for non-custom biomes, each biome type requires its own JSON file such as cold_lighting.json.

local_lighting.json format^[a] Only functional in the "Render Dragon Features for Creators" experiment in Minecraft Preview. Static lights don't require the experiment ‌in 26.10​^[upcoming].

Atmospherics

The colors and some other values for the sky can be changed in  atmospherics.^[12] The atmospheric effects include separate horizon and zenith colors, mie scattering for the sun and moon, and rayleigh scattering. The horizon and zenith colors blend into each other depending on the specified heights for both colors. Mie scattering can also specify a height.

In this JSON file, all values can be individually key framed.^[24] Instead of providing a single value for a setting, the setting can be treated as an object with a set of values from the same type. The key is a number from 0 to 1 which represents the in-game time, allowing to change atmospherics based on the time of day. The engine linearly interpolates between the values of the key frames, resulting in the actual atmospherics blending between specified times. A key of 0 is noon, 0.25 is sunset, 0.5 midnight, 0.75 sunrise, and 1 is the next noon.

In Bedrock Editor, a set of different key frames can be adjusted individually. The amount of available key frames varies for each setting. With the slider below each graph, the key value for the X-axis can be seen. The Y-axis shows all values for the setting. Each key can be moved horizontally and vertically, and all keys are connected with a line corresponding to the linear interpolation. The colors do not support a color picker for each key, instead all keys have a specified color and can only be moved horizontally to change the active times and blending of each color.

atmospherics.json format

Fog

The fog in Vibrant Visuals can be customized per biome in the same JSON file as regular fog in  fogs, and using the /fog command.^[25] However, Vibrant Visuals has some options for more complex volumetric fog and Henyey-Greenstein G.^[13]

The density of volumetric fog can be adjusted, either for specified heights or every height, for each block where fog occurs in different situations (air, water, lava). For fog in the air, clouds, or water, the color of the fog can be specified. Finally, Vibrant Visuals allows to change light shafts inside fog for water and air. All fog settings are optional, if not specified they will equal to lower settings in the fog stack, first global values and then default values.

For all settings and the JSON format, see Fog definition.

Color grading

Configurations for color grading and tone mapping can be adjusted for various situations and colors, making the final look of the scene fully customizable.^[16] Both post-processing effects are configured in JSON file per biome in the  color_grading directory.

Color grading is split into three scales based on lighting applied to the objects, and there is an additional temperature grading option. The highlight parameters are applied to the brightest pixels, the shadows to the darkest pixels, and midtones to pixels close to the average luminance of a scene. Highlights and shadows need to be enabled for specified color grading, otherwise the midtone parameters will be applied to all pixels as a global setting. The minimum brightness of the highlights and maximum brightness of the shadows affect which pixels are considered highlights and shadows instead of midtones.

For each color grading parameter, different values for each RGB color can be specified.

• The contrast affects the pixels with different luminances from the average luminance. Higher contrast values will increase brightness of highlights and darken shadows, while lower contrast values result in a more gray image with less differences in color and brightness.
• Gain affects the luminance intensity of the whole image, regardless of the luminance of a pixel.
• Similar to gain, the gamma affects the overall luminance intensity of all pixels, but after all other post-processing effects have been applied.
• The offset adjusts the intensity of pixels based on the average luminance of the scene, which is added to all pixels and has a stronger effect on brighter pixels than darker pixels.
• Saturation changes the intensity of colors apart from their luminance. Higher values increase the intensity, while lower values result in a grayscale image.

Finally, the temperature can be adjusted for the whole image, affecting how "warm" (yellow/orange) or "cool" (blue) the scene becomes. The type of temperature grading can be inverted, to make higher temperatures result in a warmer or cooler image.

The tone mapping effect cannot be customized for individual curves, but there are six operators that can be selected. Reinhard is a generic operator which looks good in low-contrast scenes and has a lower quality for higher luminances. Reinhard Luma is an extended variant that preserves details in low dynamic range regions, and Reinhard Luminance is a variant that preserves colors in higher luminance regions.

There are also filmic tone mapping operators, which emulate real-life film and work best when other Vibrant Visuals configurations are based on physically accurate values. Hable and ACES are filmic operators which preserve subtle differences in extremely dark or bright scenes, but come at a higher performance cost. Mojang Studios has developed a generic filmic tone mapping curve which preserves a bit more hue saturation at high luminance regions.

color_grading.json format

Cubemaps

Cubemaps are six 2D textures always rendered around the player which are affected by directional, ambient, and sky lighting, and scattering.^[9] They can be customized in  cubemaps for each biome or set of biomes. Custom cubemaps only affect the Overworld, the cubemap used in the End sky is unaffected.

The influence of each type of light on the cubemap can be customized, but it is always dependent of the biome's lighting settings and which types of lighting are currently applied. Cubemaps can be affected by two types of scattering. Depending on whether the cubemap contains objects in the sky (such as clouds), or in space (such as stars), atmospheric scattering should be turned on or off, respectively. Volumetric scattering lets fog and light shafts affect the cubemap, for objects close to the surface.

cubemap.json format

Shadows

There are two settings for shadows created by blocks, entities, and some other objects.^[26] They can be changed with a JSON file in  shadows and are applied globally.

• The shadow style affects which type of shadows are rendered. This can be soft, which is often used in third-party shaders and other video games, or blocky, which is used in default Vibrant Visuals. Both types are affected by the shape of the object casting the shadows.
• The texel size represents the resolution in texture to which shadows will be quantized. For the best effect, this should be the same as the pixel resolution used for block textures, which makes shadows align with the pixel grid.

global.json format

Water

Water effects can be customized per biome or for default water in the  water directory.^[14] Instead of blending the effects per biome based on the camera's location, the water color is set for the location of the water block in the world, meaning that multiple biome effects for water can be observed at once.

There are three elements that can be customized: particle concentrations, waves, and caustics.

• Particle concentrations affect the color and underwater light scattering. There are three particle concentrations in mg/L, which aren't used in default Vibrant Visuals:
  • CDOM produces yellow to yellow-brown collors. Low values result in a fresh, blue appearance, like real-life oceans, and rivers have higher CDOM and more colored water.
  • Chlorophyll produces green colors, which varies based on the temperature in real life.
  • Suspended sediment produces red to red-brown colors, which appears more in real-life rivers.
• Waves are animations on the surface of water, disabled in default Vibrant Visuals. They can partially replace the water surface texture by actual three-dimensional textures, but this doesn't affect gameplay. Waves can be customized with various settings, which affect speed variations, smoother or sharper shapes, the amount of waves (and variations) per block, and the height of waves. Individual wave animations can blend into each other and pull into larger waves, which can be customized.
• Caustics are animated textures projected on any object surfaces behind a water surface when directional lighting hits the surface, which are enabled by default. The caustics use an internal texture with 64 frames of animation, but this can be changed to any custom texture. The speed of the animation (frame length) and scale can be customized, and the intensity can be increased.
  • A custom caustics texture must have all animation frames laid out vertically next to each other, each using the same square resolution. It should be located under the  textures directory in the resource pack, declared in  textures_list.json.
• The biome's water color is ignored by default in Vibrant Visuals, but ‌in Bedrock Edition 26.0​^[upcoming], the contribution of the regular water color can be customized. Depending on the setting, water will be tinted with a color specified in the client biome file, which is applied prior to the effects from particle concentrations.

water.json format

Quotes

Sounds

Videos

History

Announcement

Vibrant Visuals were revealed at Minecraft LIVE – March 2025, planned for Bedrock Edition in the coming months, with more improvements over the next few years.^[27][28] It is planned to come to Java Edition in the future, but without colored lighting.^[29] Developers are rewriting the rendering code before Vibrant Visuals will be added to all Java Edition supported devices.^[1]

Deferred Technical Preview

Before Vibrant Visuals was released, the deferred rendering engine was available behind the "Render Dragon Features for Creators" experiment in Minecraft Preview. This was built on the features for ray tracing, and gradually developed more exclusive rendering features.^[30] Unlike Vibrant Visuals, Mojang Studios did not provide any default configurations and textures, meaning that it needed to be configured first through resource packs, similar to ray tracing.

Since the vanilla implementation of Vibrant Visuals, the experimental deferred lighting mode has been merged with the graphics upgrade. However, the experiment is still used for other deferred rendering features that are not implemented in Vibrant Visuals, such as colored lighting.

• 
  The first image of the deferred technical preview.
• 
  The first image of volumetric fog and light shafts.
• 
  The first image of water effects.
• 
  The first image of subsurface scattering.
• 
  The first image of waves.

Bedrock Edition

Issues

Issues relating to "Vibrant Visuals" are maintained on the bug tracker. Issues should be reported and viewed there.

Trivia

• 

  Vibrant Visuals can be enabled in worlds locked in any older version using world templates. This ignores all resource packs from versions above the world's version, including Vibrant Visuals configurations and textures. This results in interesting behavior for some features, while most others function normally:
  • All MERS textures are ignored, making environments without directional lighting appear identical to classic graphics modes.
  • Atmospherics and lighting configurations are not applied, defaulting to the hard-coded values, and some environmental effects do not appear at all. Sunset and sunrise for example, tint the zenith sky dark blue and the horizon red, much brighter than regular colors.
  • Shadows are not blocky but soft.
  • End flashes still occur, but are not colored and appear white.
  • The End sky is not colored below the horizon, resembling the classic End sky with Night Vision. At zenith however, the sky is tinted dark green/blue.
  • Without brightness configurations, directional lighting from the sun appears glitched, and excessively bright.
  • The Nether roof is completely glitched without any light.
  • Water reflections or cubemaps don't appear, deep water looks shadow blue.
  • For a moment in the loading world screen before entering the world, the panorama renders with the missing texture, but in HDR.
• The introduction of Vibrant Visuals added MERS textures for any block, entity, and particle present in all vanilla resources, including unused textures and various old textures kept for backward-compatibility. However, these can never be encountered in-game because loading an old world will ignore the resource packs containing these textures.
• According to developers, the deferred rendering mode was build on parts from the RTX pipeline and the rendering pipeline from Minecraft Legends since 2020.^[32]

• 
  The End sky in an older version with a flash.
• 
  Sunlight appears too bright, and the sky has unusual colors.
• 
  A glitched Nether roof in older versions.
• 
  The missing panorama.

Gallery

Textures

• 
  The texture of the sun exclusive to Vibrant Visuals, which has more vibrant colors and layers.
• 
  caustics.png, containing 50 frames of the water caustics animation.
• 
  brdf_lut.png

Screenshots

• 
  The moon has a blue glow and can create shadows.
• 
  Sunlight falling into a lush cave through a hole. Although the blocks look fully lit, the light level is still 0 and hostile mobs can spawn.
• 
  Shadows on trees in an old growth pine taiga, as seen from the position of the sun. Notice the subsurface scattering on leaves, and the player's shadow.
• 
  Icebergs create detailed reflections on an ocean's surface, while clouds create blurry reflections.
• 
  The Nether. Screenshot taken over a lava sea in a warped forest.
• 
  The End.
• 
  The Nether roof has red ambient lighting, where no other light sources are available.
• 
  The void lets light beams shine through the bedrock at higher distances.
• 
  The unused "hot" atmospherics, lighting, and color grading settings applied to wooded badlands with a resource pack.

Settings

• 
  The Vibrant Visuals options in the video settings.
• 
  The Vibrant Visuals options in Minecraft Preview.
• 
  The Vibrant Visuals gamma calibration screen.
• 
  A cave with gamma set to 50% (left), 100% (middle), and 150% (right).
• 
  Example of a render distance of 128 chunks with Vibrant Visuals enabled.
• 
  Water with reflections off. The redstone torch can be seen emitting red point light.
• 
  The same water with reflections set to Ultra.
• 
  A torch and soul torch with point lights off. They look just like torches in Fancy graphics, despite Vibrant Visuals being used.
• 
  The same torch and soul torch with point lights on. Each torch emits colored light on its side of the room, and the colored light can be faintly seen combining into green light in the middle.
• 
  An ocean near a jungle with reflections set to Low or Off.
• 
  Ditto, with reflections set to Medium.
• 
  Ditto, with reflections set to High.
• 
  Ditto, with reflections set to Ultra.
• 
  The cloud distance set to Low.
• 
  The cloud distance set to Medium.
• 
  The cloud distance set to High.
• 
  The cloud distance set to Ultra.

Vibrant Visuals announcement

• 
  A beach without Vibrant Visuals. There is a mangrove swamp and jungle behind it. Also, there are firefly bushes in the swamp, emitting firefly particles.
• 
  The same beach with Vibrant Visuals. The firely particles are more visible, and have a blue color. Also, the sun produces a strong glare.
• 
  Zuri on a boat on the coast of a jungle and a bamboo forest during sunset with Vibrant Visuals.
• 
  A forest with Vibrant Visuals. On the left there is a large oak tree, and the leaves are reflecting some of the blue skylight.
• 
  A comparison of Fancy graphics (on the left) and Vibrant Visuals (on the right), in a cherry grove biome. The 2 screenshots are taken at different angles and different positions. Also, the render distance is set to a low value.
• 
  A similar comparison of the Fancy graphics and Vibrant Visuals, outside a woodland mansion, looking into the right window of "Triple bed bedroom", with a potted azure bluet.
• 
  A similar comparison of the Fancy graphics and Vibrant Visuals, with icebergs in a frozen ocean. The ice is actually less transparent in Vibrant Visuals, so the form of the ice berg underwater cannot be seen as easily.
• 
  A desert village with Vibrant Visuals, during sunset. There is also some badlands on the right. The screenshot was taken in a river, so the yellow haze of the desert is not present. Instead, there is a blue haze, which makes the texture of the sand more visible.
• 
  A copper boat sailing through a jungle river, with a copper water mill on the right, a large bridge on the cliffs in the background, and multiple cliffside buildings.
• 
  A frozen ocean at sunset, with 3 polar bears and a snow fox, while Zuri does some ice fishing. Minor visual glitches can be seen on the icebergs.
• 
  A lake in a badlands biome, with a wooded badlands behind it.
• 
  A plains biome at sunrise, with an oak tree in the center, and a mountain and jagged peaks behind it.
• 
  A plains village at sunrise, which is actually right behind the hill in the previous snapshot.
• 
  A cherry grove with the sun hovering just over the cliff. The camera is in a plains biome.
• 
  A player-made wheat and carrot farm, with homes next to it. Kai, Sunny, and Zuri are standing in the farm (ordered left to right).
• 
  An old growth pine taiga.
• 
  A plains with a river running through it.
• 
  A cabin in a snowy taiga.
• 
  A tree house in a jungle.
• 
• 

Chase the Skies announcement

• 
  Ari using the new leashing functionality to leash 3 mobs in a line, while holding a snowball to attract a happy ghast.
• 
  A trio of happy ghasts ridden by Efe, Makena, and Kai, with mobs in boats underneath.
• 
  Ari riding a horse while leashing a camel and a happy ghast.
• 
  A ghastling next to water. Ripples and reflections can be seen in the water.
• 
  Each image shows a swamp during sunset. The right image shows the reflection of the sunset in Vibrant Visuals. These images show how Vibrant Visuals enhances the scene.
• 
  A desert (left), stony shore (top), and badlands (right) during sunset. These images show how Vibrant Visuals enhances the scene.
• 
  A mangrove swamp during sunset. These images show how Vibrant Visuals enhances the scene.
• 

See also

• Overworld Adventures, a series of online stories made to promote Vibrant Visuals.
• Vibrant Memories Add-On, an add-on made to promote the initial launch.
• Vibrant Adventures, an adventure world template featured in the Vibrant Visuals-tagged contents in the Marketplace.
• Shader, the previous system of graphics enhancement in Bedrock Edition using resource packs which is still used in Java Edition.
• Shader packs, similar but unofficial graphic enhancement mods for Java Edition.
• Super Duper Graphics Pack, a previously cancelled graphics update for Bedrock Edition.

Notes

References

External links

• "Vibrant Visuals" – Minecraft.net, March 22, 2025.
• "Vibrant Visuals: Enable Enhanced Minecraft Graphics" – Minecraft.net.
• Deferred lighting starter samples on GitHub.
• Vibrant Visuals packs in the Marketplace.

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