Creating Your First Custom Lighting Effect

Plan Your Effect

Decide what lighting change you want: brighter caves, softer shadows, or enhanced sunlight. Write this down—it keeps you focused while coding.

Locate the Lighting File

Find the fragment shader file responsible for light calculations. The mod's tutorial series shows you which file to open for lighting tweaks. Open it in a text editor.

Make a Small Change

Follow the video guide for your chosen effect. You'll typically adjust a single value or formula—for example, multiplying light intensity by a number or changing how shadows blend with lit areas. Make only one change at a time.

Test Your Work

Save the file and load a world. Look for your effect in different lighting conditions: underground, at sunset, in caves. If something looks wrong, undo your change and try a different approach.

Iterate Carefully

Small adjustments teach you how each part of the code affects the final image. This hands-on testing is how you build intuition for shader coding.