Sundial Lite
🟡 Updated this year🖼️ Gallery (10 images)
🔍 Analysis
- 👍 0.1% endorsement rate
- 🏆 #51 of 223 atmosphere mods in this game by downloads
📋 About This Mod
# Sundial Lite Sundial Lite is the free and open source version of Sundial, using (https://github.com/GeForceLegend/Sundial-Lite/blob/main/LICENSE). It's designed to make the balance between quality, performance and compatibility. ## Supported versions Optifine released after 04.12.2019 (1.8.9 L5) is supported. Theoretically can run on Iris 1.5.0 and above, but for less bugs, latest Iris is suggested. ## Features Sundial Lite contains most features from the full version and with some extra features, including but not limits to: - Shadowmapping, including transparent shadow and water caustics - Waving plants - Full LabPBR support (LabPBR AO is disabled by default) and some optional builtin PBR material for certain blocks - Builtin anisotropic filtering, does not need vanilla/Optifine's anisotropic enabled - Smooth parallax for smoothed surface, and voxel parallax for exact cubic surface - Parallax based normal for unified parallax and normal experience - Percentage closer soft shadow, screen space shadow and cloud shadow - Noisy SSGI and SSAO based on (https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XcdBWf) - Screen space reflection with reflection filter - Physical based atmosphere that considers player height - Switchable blocky and realistic cloud, both can occlude ground if you fly high enough, and extra 2D plane cloud - Vanilla weather rendering - Switchable realistic and vanilla style water type - Refraction based on one time offset - Sunlight specular on transparent objects - Water fog, nether fog and the end fog, also include galaxy for the end - Volumetric light and volumetric fog - Depth of Field - Temporal anti aliasing - Motion blur - Bloom - Average exposure - Barrel/pincushion disortion - Chromatic dispersion - Tonemapping and some final color adjustments - FidelityFX RCAS final sharpening - Lots of configurable shader options for above features - Correct held object support for SSGI, SSAO, Screen space shadow, reflection, DoF and TAA - Compatible with Distant Horizons, Voxy, Vivecraft, Colorwheel, Super Resolution and Physics Mod Pro As a compartion to the full version, it does not use voxelization and world space ray tracing, reducing volumetric light and reflection from computing 2 times to 1 time, losing multiple bounce reflection, but have much better performance and mod compatibility. ## Known issues - As a deferred-rendering shaders, it does not work well on mods that use transparent objects without writing to depth, and can only see the closest transparent objects, like you cannot see water behind stained glass blocks - Due to terrain culling in shadow and render distance limit, sometimes you may see sunlight leaks in caves and buildings, this is not that resolvable on shader side - Minecraft 26.1's rendering order is very bad, causing some overlay designed to decorate solid object are rendering with transparent obejcts, causing enchantment glint, horse marking, banner pattern, spider/enderman eyes and so on cannot rendered correctly on deferred-rendering shaders, and very expensive to resolve on shader side - Certain versions of Optifine (like 1.21.2 to 1.21.8 J6 Pre15) cannot use vanilla light texture in deferred pipeline correctly, disable `Mod support > Mod night vision compat` can fix it on those versions
# Sundial Lite
Sundial Lite is the free and open source version of Sundial, using (https://github.com/GeForceLegend/Sundial-Lite/blob/main/LICENSE). It's designed to make the balance between quality, performance and compatibility.
## Supported versions
Optifine released after 04. 12. 2019 (1. 8. 9 L5) is supported.
Theoretically can run on Iris 1. 5. 0 and above, but for less bugs, latest Iris is suggested.
## Features
Sundial Lite contains most features from the full version and with some extra features, including but not limits to:
- Shadowmapping, including transparent shadow and water caustics
- Waving plants
- Full LabPBR support (LabPBR AO is disabled by default) and some optional builtin PBR material for certain blocks
- Builtin anisotropic filtering, does not need vanilla/Optifine's anisotropic enabled
- Smooth parallax for smoothed surface, and voxel parallax for exact cubic surface
- Parallax based normal for unified parallax and normal experience
- Percentage closer soft shadow, screen space shadow and cloud shadow
- Noisy SSGI and SSAO based on (https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XcdBWf)
- Screen space reflection with reflection filter
- Physical based atmosphere that considers player height
- Switchable blocky and realistic cloud, both can occlude ground if you fly high enough, and extra 2D plane cloud
- Vanilla weather rendering
- Switchable realistic and vanilla style water type
- Refraction based on one time offset
- Sunlight specular on transparent objects
- Water fog, nether fog and the end fog, also include galaxy for the end
- Volumetric light and volumetric fog
- Depth of Field
- Temporal anti aliasing
- Motion blur
- Bloom
- Average exposure
- Barrel/pincushion disortion
- Chromatic dispersion
- Tonemapping and some final color adjustments
- FidelityFX RCAS final sharpening
- Lots of configurable shader options for above features
- Correct held object support for SSGI, SSAO, Screen space shadow, reflection, DoF and TAA
- Compatible with Distant Horizons, Voxy, Vivecraft, Colorwheel, Super Resolution and Physics Mod Pro
As a compartion to the full version, it does not use voxelization and world space ray tracing, reducing volumetric light and reflection from computing 2 times to 1 time, losing multiple bounce reflection, but have much better performance and mod compatibility.
## Known issues
- As a deferred-rendering shaders, it does not work well on mods that use transparent objects without writing to depth, and can only see the closest transparent objects, like you cannot see water behind stained glass blocks
- Due to terrain culling in shadow and render distance limit, sometimes you may see sunlight leaks in caves and buildings, this is not that resolvable on shader side
- Minecraft 26. 1's rendering order is very bad, causing some overlay designed to decorate solid object are rendering with transparent obejcts, causing enchantment glint, horse marking, banner pattern, spider/enderman eyes and so on cannot rendered correctly on deferred-rendering shaders, and very expensive to resolve on shader side
- Certain versions of Optifine (like 1. 21. 2 to 1. 21. 8 J6 Pre15) cannot use vanilla light texture in deferred pipeline correctly, disable `Mod support > Mod night vision compat` can fix it on those versions
📊 Mod Details
- Game
- Minecraft Shaders
- Author
- GeForceLegend
- Version
- 1.1.0
- Downloads
- 37,526
- Endorsements
- 43
- Category
- atmosphere
- Created
- 6/2/2026
- Updated
- 8/10/2026
- Game Versions
- 1.8.9, 1.12.2, 1.14.4, 1.15, 1.15.1
- Tags
- atmosphere, realistic, reflections
🔧 How to Install Minecraft Shaders Mods
Download from Modrinth. Use Prism Launcher or drop into your mods folder.
📖 Full step-by-step install guide for Minecraft Shaders →
Visit the official mod page for specific installation instructions for this mod.
🎮 Need cheat codes or console commands? Check ur gaming wiki for Minecraft Shaders commands, item IDs, and more.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Which Minecraft Shaders versions does Sundial Lite support?
The author lists 1.8.9, 1.12.2, 1.14.4, 1.15, 1.15.1, 1.15.2. Other versions may work but are untested by the author.
What is the latest version of Sundial Lite?
Version 1.1.0, published 2026-08-10 with 37,526 downloads recorded at the source.
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