The world's first hardware ray tracing engine for Minecraft on Mac.
Watch the launch film on YouTube
Rockstar Shaders is a Fabric mod for Minecraft 26.3 that gives the game a modern renderer built for modern Mac hardware. For years, Macs have had some of the most capable graphics chips around and no way to use them in Minecraft. Now sunlight, sky light, bounce light and reflections are ray traced by your Mac's own GPU with Metal, water splashes when you jump in and leaves a wake behind your boat, and the world reaches all the way to the horizon.
Download on Patreon
Technical details on GitHubVersion 1.0.0. Apple Silicon, M1 or later. Minecraft 26.3, Fabric. How to install.
See it work
Every clip is straight from the engine, captured at 4K on an M4 Max MacBook Pro for the launch film.
Light that is traced, not painted
Every frame, rays leave the surface you are looking at and go looking for the sun and the sky. A tree shades the ground under it because the ray hit a leaf, and light carries the color of every surface it bounces off. The sun through the vines here is the real sun, traced.
Water that reacts
The surface is a real-time simulation that follows you. Jump in and it splashes, and a ring of ripples spreads out and reflects off the walls. Row a boat and a wake opens behind you. Rain rings every drop.
Rain you can see land
Rain falls in the world and rings the water where it lands, and the reflections are traced, so the bay shows the town behind it and not a smeared copy of the screen.
See to the horizon
An extended render distance draws simplified terrain far past what Minecraft shows on its own, so the mountains keep going all the way to the sky.
Storms
Rain, thunder and lightning across the whole sky. A bolt lights up the whole scene for an instant, and the water throws it back.
Volumetric light
Light pours through windows and leaves in visible shafts, and takes on the color of the stained glass it passes through.
Night skies
Stars, the moon and a flowing aurora on cold, clear nights, lit by the same atmosphere that paints the sunsets.
Your resource packs
Custom entity models and their animations load and run, and LabPBR normal and specular maps give blocks, items and mobs real surface detail.
What is in 1.0
It renders the whole game, every dimension. This is what the renderer does on every frame.
Traced sun and sky
Ray-traced sun shadows, sky visibility and one bounce of global illumination, on the GPU with Metal. Cascaded soft shadows cover what the tracer does not.
The water engine
Fetch-limited waves, a ripple simulation with wakes, rain rings, caustics, falling water and plunge pools, streams that run on into still water, shorelines and surf.
Sky and weather
An atmosphere model lights the sun, the square clouds and the sunsets. Stars and nebulae at night. Rain in the world, storm decks, puddles, lightning, snow on leaves.
Materials and light
Deferred physically based shading, colored block light, dynamic lights from a held torch, glass mirrors, metals, and a wind that moves leaves and lanterns but not the log they hang from.
The image
Temporal anti-aliasing, auto exposure, bloom and AgX grading. Volumetric fog and god rays that know where the sky is.
Settings that apply live
Press K in a world. One page per category, eleven of them, and an Advanced page with every constant the shaders read. Most changes land on the next frame; the few that need a restart say so.
Built on a Mac, for Macs
Minecraft 26.3 has its own Vulkan renderer. On a Mac that runs through MoltenVK on top of Metal, and Rockstar Shaders puts a Metal ray-tracing engine right beside it, sharing the same GPU memory. Nothing is emulated and nothing goes through OpenGL.
Every number in the settings was measured on an M4 Max in a test world of more than seventy certified camera positions. The world renders at 75% of the window by default and is upscaled, because that one setting is worth more than every quality knob together; on an M1 or an M2, lower it another step, or let Target FPS lower it for you when frames miss the rate. The settings screen has a pass-timings overlay so you can see where each millisecond goes.
What you need
Minecraft
Java Edition 26.3 with Fabric Loader 0.19.5 or newer and the Fabric API for 26.3. Any launcher: the official one, MultiMC, Prism.
Java
Java 25. The runtime bundled with the game is fine.
A Mac with Apple silicon
M1 or later on a recent macOS. Intel Macs are not supported: there is no Metal ray tracing there.
Vulkan
The mod asks to switch the graphics API at the title screen the first time, then you restart once. That is the whole setup.
Windows and Linux are not supported in this release. The traced features are Metal, and without them the picture is wrong, not just slower. I will say clearly when that changes.
How it works
Two engines share one Apple GPU. Minecraft's own Vulkan renderer, running through MoltenVK, draws the frame, and a native Metal library traces the rays. Every frame, the chunk sections around you become a Metal acceleration structure, three ray tracing kernels run against it, and their results feed the lighting, atmosphere and water passes. On M3 and later the intersections run on the GPU's ray tracing hardware; M1 and M2 run the same kernels in software.
The full stage table is on GitHub. The advanced technical documentation (pass-by-pass internals, the full settings and constant reference, and performance breakdowns) is published for supporters on Patreon, and grows with frequent updates.
Nothing leaves your Mac
No analytics, no accounts, no update check, no telemetry. The mod writes its settings file inside your game folder and lines in the game's own log, and that is all it writes. This site has no cookies and no trackers either.
Questions
Which Macs does it run on?
Any Apple Silicon Mac, M1 or later, on a recent macOS. Everything is measured on an M4 Max with 48 GB of memory, so on an M1 or an M2 lower Render scale a step and let Target FPS hold the rate. Intel Macs are not supported.
Does it work on Windows or Linux?
Not in this release. The mod loads, but the ray-traced sun shadows, sky visibility, bounce light and fog occlusion are Metal, so enclosed spaces look veiled and the lighting is wrong. I will say clearly when that changes.
Is it a shader pack like the OptiFine or Iris ones?
No. It is a Fabric mod with its own renderer inside. There is nothing to drop into a shaderpacks folder, it does not need Iris or OptiFine, and it will not run alongside them.
Why does it need Vulkan?
Minecraft 26.3 has its own Vulkan renderer, and that is what the mod hooks into. On a Mac, Vulkan runs through MoltenVK on top of Metal, and the tracing engine shares the same GPU memory with it. OpenGL has no way to do that.
What does 1.0 mean here?
It is the first release. It renders the whole game, every dimension, and it has passed a certification run of more than seventy captures on one machine, an M4 Max. Your Mac is the next one, so expect a few rough edges, and expect me to want your log file.
How fast is it?
On the M4 Max, at the sunset bay looking down at the water, a 1708 by 960 frame takes about 34 to 36 ms and the owner's 1706 by 1966 window about 46 ms, with the world rendered at 75% and upscaled. The water pass is the largest single cost. Your numbers will differ. The settings screen has a pass-timings overlay so you can see where the time goes.
Why Patreon?
Because the early builds cost real hours to make and to support, and a small first wave means I can read every report. Supporters get each build as it ships and a say in what gets fixed next.
How do I report a bug?
The issue tracker or the Patreon thread. Include logs/latest.log and a screenshot with the F3 overlay. If it is about performance, screenshot the pass-timings overlay from the settings screen.
Can I use the screenshots?
Yes. Everything on the media page is free to use in reviews, videos and posts, with a link back.
Is it affiliated with Mojang?
No. Rockstar Shaders is an independent project. Minecraft is a trademark of Mojang Synergies AB.
Playing with a controller?
InputConfig is my other app: a free controller mapper for the Mac. It turns a PS5, Xbox or Switch controller, a MIDI keyboard or a spare mouse into a full keyboard and mouse for your Mac, so Minecraft and everything else on the machine plays the way you want. No account, no subscription, nothing locked.
Made by one person who plays on a Mac
I wanted the water and the light the Windows packs had, on the machine I actually own. This is that, measured frame by frame, and it is early. If you want it, version 1.0 is on Patreon.