Guide

Rockstar Shaders compared with the packs people know

By Ryleigh Newman · Published 19 September 2026 · Updated 24 September 2026

Rockstar Shaders is not a shader pack. Complementary, BSL and SEUS PTGI are packs: files of shaders that a loader, Iris or OptiFine, runs inside the game's own renderer, and Iris says that renderer is OpenGL. Rockstar Shaders is a Fabric mod with its own renderer inside it, running on Minecraft 26.3's own Vulkan backend with a Metal ray-tracing side-car beside it, and it is macOS on Apple Silicon only. That difference decides most of the table below: the loader, the graphics API, and whether it runs on a Mac.

I made Rockstar Shaders, so read its column as the maker's account and the others as each project's own words: complementary.dev, the Modrinth pages for Complementary, BSL, Iris and Sodium, sonicether.com, the Iris repository's FAQ and driver support page, the OptiFine downloads page and Microsoft's page on ray tracing in Bedrock Edition, all read on 2026-09-19. Where a project does not say something the table says not stated, and I did not test the other packs for this page. Rockstar Shaders is a 1.0 release measured on one machine, an M4 Max with 48 GB, and this page says where it is behind as well as where it is different.

Download free (1.0.0) Modrinth (pending)Minecraft 26.3, Fabric, macOS on Apple silicon. Install guide. Releases and bug reports on GitHub.

Side by side

Every pack and loader here is a free download, Rockstar Shaders included. Whether Complementary or BSL run on a Mac is the loader's answer, the Iris row.

A pack against a renderer

A shader pack needs a loader, and it inherits the loader's graphics API. Iris's driver page says it depends on OpenGL and that Apple has deprecated it, which is why the Mac column above reads not supported. Rockstar Shaders hooks Minecraft 26.3's own Vulkan renderer instead, which on a Mac runs through MoltenVK on top of Metal, and puts a Metal ray-tracing side-car next to it that traces the game's chunk vertex buffers directly. There is no shaderpacks folder: the shaders are inside the jar. It needs Fabric Loader and the Fabric API and nothing else; no OptiFine, Iris or Sodium, and no Continuity, EMF or ETF for the resource-pack features it reads on its own.

The price of that design is the platform. The side-car is Metal, so Windows, Linux and Intel Macs are not supported and not tested, and without the side-car the traced light is missing and enclosed spaces look veiled. A pack on Iris runs on Windows and Linux, per Iris's own table; Rockstar Shaders runs on the Mac they do not.

Complementary and BSL

Complementary describes itself as a shader pack for Minecraft Java Edition with two styles, Unbound for a more realistic look and Reimagined to keep Minecraft's own visual elements, and profiles from Potato to Ultra; it began as an edit of BSL in 2019. Its installer sets up the Iris loader, and its Modrinth pages list Iris and OptiFine, versions up to 26.3, and a custom license. BSL's Modrinth page calls it bright, colorful and distinct, lists Iris and OptiFine, versions up to 26.2 and none for 26.3, and all rights reserved. Neither says anything about macOS; the loader decides that, and Iris lists Apple Silicon Macs as not supported.

Where they are ahead: years of tuning, Complementary's profile chooser from Potato to Ultra, and Windows and Linux through Iris. Where Rockstar Shaders is different rather than better: the shadows, sky light and bounce light are traced in hardware against real geometry, the water has its own engine, and it runs on the Mac it was made on. More on Complementary on a Mac and BSL on a Mac.

SEUS PTGI

SEUS PTGI is the pack people mean by ray tracing in Java Edition. Sonic Ether's site calls it an experimental version of SEUS with a totally custom software implementation of ray tracing that does not require an RTX graphics card, path-traced global illumination as the main feature, and ray-traced reflections beside it. It is a pack for OptiFine or the legacy GLSL Shaders Mod, it is now free, and the newest build listed is HRR Test 2.1, dated 17 December 2020.

Two things follow for a Mac. It needs OptiFine, whose newest build on 2026-09-19 was a preview for 26.1.2. And Iris's driver page notes that SEUS PTGI HRR 2.1 does not work on AMD because of NVIDIA-specific code, so in practice it is NVIDIA territory even without RTX hardware. Rockstar Shaders traces in hardware on Metal: sun shadows, sky visibility, one bounce of global illumination, water reflections and fog occlusion. It does not path-trace the whole image and I do not call it a path tracer. More on path-traced GI on a Mac.

Iris, Sodium and OptiFine

Iris is the open-source loader, LGPL-3.0, that runs OptiFine-format packs on Fabric, NeoForge and Quilt, and its FAQ says it requires Sodium, the rendering engine replacement under the Polyform Shield license; both list 26.3. Its driver page marks all drivers on Apple Silicon as not supported, with known crash issues on common shaders, and explains that it depends on OpenGL, which Apple has deprecated. Sodium's Modrinth page, dated 16 June 2026, says 0.9.x for 26.2 has early support for Vulkan. OptiFine's downloads page lists a preview for 26.1.2 as its newest build and nothing newer.

Rockstar Shaders is none of these. It is not a loader and it reads no shader packs; it needs the game on Vulkan, where it replaces the world rendering. What it shares with OptiFine is the resource-pack formats: connected textures, emissive block textures, custom entity models, random and emissive entity textures and custom skies are read natively. The OptiFine on a Mac page and the resource packs help page list which properties work.

Bedrock's ray tracing

The other ray tracing people search for is the Bedrock Edition feature. Microsoft's getting-started page lists what it needs: Windows 64-bit, a PC, and a DirectX hardware ray tracing GPU, RTX 20 series or RX 6000 series and higher, with a ray-tracing resource pack carrying physically based textures. It says the ray tracing worlds are for the Windows version of the game, and a note at the top says ray tracing has largely been superseded by Vibrant Visuals. None of that reaches a Mac. Rockstar Shaders is a Java Edition mod on Apple Silicon, and its tracing is Metal, on the Mac's own GPU. The Minecraft RTX on Mac page is the plain version of that search.

Where Rockstar Shaders is behind

It is version 1.0, and the settings tooltip says it: settings can move between builds, some combinations are untested, a few things are known to be wrong. It has been measured on exactly one machine, an M4 Max with 48 GB, and has never been run on anyone else's. Windows, Linux and Intel Macs are not supported and not tested. There is no profile chooser on screen; the shipped defaults are the Ultra set and the way down is the sliders. The player's own first-person shadow is wired but does not appear. Foam, spray and white water are compiled out by default. Custom skies are not reflected in water. Colored block light leaks through thin walls. The ripple field restarts from flat when the renderer is rebuilt. MetalFX upscaling exists but is off because it lost detail. Better to read that list here than find it in a world; how to report a bug is where the next items come from. If you came from one pack, the short pages answer directly: Complementary, BSL, SEUS PTGI and Iris, each on a Mac.

Download free (1.0.0) Modrinth (pending)Minecraft 26.3, Fabric, macOS on Apple silicon. Install guide. Releases and bug reports on GitHub.

About the author. Ryleigh Newman wrote Rockstar Shaders and every page on this site. Facts about other packs and programs come from their own sites, with the date they were read. More about the project.

Related

• Complementary Shaders on a Mac, and what I built instead
• BSL Shaders on a Mac, and what I built instead
• SEUS PTGI on a Mac, and the nearest thing I can offer
• Iris Shaders on a Mac
• The best Minecraft shaders for a Mac in September 2026

Sources

• https://www.complementary.dev/ (read 2026-09-19)
• https://www.complementary.dev/shaders/ (read 2026-09-19)
• https://modrinth.com/shader/complementary-reimagined (read 2026-09-19)
• https://modrinth.com/shader/complementary-unbound (read 2026-09-19)
• https://modrinth.com/shader/bsl-shaders (read 2026-09-19)
• https://www.sonicether.com/seus/ (read 2026-09-19)
• https://github.com/IrisShaders/Iris/blob/multiloader-new/docs/usage/drivers.md (read 2026-09-19)
• https://github.com/IrisShaders/Iris/blob/multiloader-new/docs/faq.md (read 2026-09-19)
• https://modrinth.com/mod/iris (read 2026-09-19)
• https://modrinth.com/mod/sodium (read 2026-09-19)
• https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/sodium (read 2026-09-19)
• https://optifine.net/downloads (read 2026-09-19)
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/minecraft/creator/documents/rtxgettingstarted?view=minecraft-bedrock-stable (read 2026-09-19)
• https://modrinth.com/mod/rockstarshaders (read 2026-09-24)
• https://github.com/ryleighnewman/RockstarShaders (read 2026-09-19)

Questions