This pack took a lot of time, effort and energy to create, but I'm providing it completely for free. There are no ads, no demo versions or paywalls, it's all free. If you If you would like to support me, please use the Donate button on the right, or use this link. Any and all donations are greatly appreaciated. Thank you!
Custom sky texture requires Optifine to work. See details for Fabric below.
- Clouds and Auroras made with Blender with a combination of vdb volumes and procedural nodes for best manipulation and integration into Minecraft.
- Moon textures also made with Blender, using textures straight from NASA, available for free download for anyone.
- Sun texture painted in GIMP.
Moon feature:
The benefit of using 3D rendering software, is that the geometry of the surface of the Moon is clearly visible due to the lighting. I've not yet seen any pack doing this.
Of course, the scale of it is totally exaggerated, but this pack is called "hyper realistic" after all :)
Sky features:
This custom sky has many features I've not yet seen any pack do, so I'll just list them below (click to expand each).
- Clouds will seamlessly fade into the vanilla fog
Leaving no jarring lines on unloaded chunk boarders:
- Clouds have proper depth and density
At night, clouds will properly block out the stars:
The glow from the Moon (and Sun) will be behind the clouds:
Unfortunately, it's impossible to block out the Moon with layers with any blending modes, so it'll just show through the clouds:
- Irregular cloud rotation
This one is a really easy feature to implement, but it's super effective. Clouds will "always" be at a different orientation on the same time of the day.
VIDEO - Rain + Thunder clouds
Unique clouds for rain and thunderstorms, for all 4 stages of the day.
VIDEO - Hot / Cold biome clouds
Unique clouds for snowy biomes, warm biomes (badlands, savanna and mangrove), and for deserts for all 4 stages of the day.
VIDEO - Auroras (northern lights)
These will appear at night in cold biomes at full Moon.
VIDEO - Counter-rotating star background
This I think really gives a "celestial" feel to the night sky, seeing the Moon rotate freely from the star background.
VIDEO - Milky way will fade out as the Moon gets fuller to imitate light pollution
- Starry night sky rotates around the Northern Star
- Realistic 3D atmosphere
Another advantage of using 3D software, is being able to add volumetric falloff to the cloudscape.
VIDEO - Custom End sky
- Shader support
There are 2 shaders that work with this pack, Sildur's enhanced default, and Complementary shaders. For Sildur's shader, you need to use the vanilla version of the pack, because the sky is actually identical in that shader to the vanilla sky.
Also the regular stuff applies here as well when using sky packs with shaders, so for best experience, you should turn off the shader stars, sun and moon, clouds, as well as the auroras. Also be sure to turn off or set to 0° any angle offset to the sun & moon.
Complementary comparison:
VIDEO
IMPORTANT FOR SHADER VERSION!
To use the shader version, unzip the pack into its own folder, open it, and double click with_shaders.bat.
Moreover, to use the shader version of the pack with the Complementary shaders, be sure the keep the Vanilla sky brightness at the default value of 2! - Fabric support
Download Fabric here.
You will also need the Fabric API as well as the Fabric Skyboxes mod. Place both of these files into your mods folder. Be sure to use the latest versions.
Current limitations and/or differences in the Fabric version:
-Milky way remains the same brightness regardless of Moon phase
-Auroras will appear above Y=96 on every night, instead of on all Y levels on every 8th night (full Moon)
-Auroras are not animated - Clouds above Y=256 will disappear
- Atmosphere above Y=512 will disappear ("go out into space effect")
So that's about it, I hope you'll enjoy this pack!
Any questions, suggestions, leave them below!