How to Customize Complementary Shaders for Building and Exploration
The best shader settings for a screenshot session are wrong for a building session, and both are wrong for exploring unlit caves. Complementary Shaders rewards players who keep two or three mental configurations: one tuned for building, one for exploration. This guide lays out both, what to prioritise, what to sacrifice, and how to switch between the moods quickly.
What building asks of a shader
Building is visual work. You are judging colours, aligning edges, reading block states and checking how a facade sits in its landscape. The shader's job is to get out of the way while still making the world pleasant:
- Even, honest light. You need to see your materials' true colours. Strong grading lies to you about palette choices.
- Shadows on, but moderate. Shadows give builds depth and reveal shape errors; extreme shadow settings add cost without adding information.
- Low-to-moderate atmosphere. Fog and heavy grading obscure sight-lines across a large project.
- Stable frame rate at your build's render distance. Big projects are heavy scenes; protect smoothness first.
Reimagined is the natural base style here, its design goal is exactly this clarity. The detailed dials are in lighting and shadow settings.
A building configuration
| Area | Direction |
|---|---|
| Profile | Medium (or the highest that stays smooth at your project) |
| Brightness / fill | Slightly generous, shade stays readable |
| Atmosphere / fog | Light, keep long sight-lines honest |
| Water | Default reflections; pretty but not the priority |
| Clouds | Default or simple, you are looking at the build, not the sky |
What exploration asks of a shader
Exploration is the opposite brief: you are there for the world itself. Atmosphere is the content. Priorities invert:
- Atmosphere and sky up. Clouds, fog and grading create the vistas you travelled for.
- Water reflections up. Rivers and coasts are exploration's landmarks.
- Night handled deliberately. Either embrace real darkness (Unbound's character) with light discipline, or lift brightness slightly so caving and night travel stay practical.
- Render distance as high as smooth. Exploration is where distance pays, with fog tuned to match (atmosphere settings).
Unbound is the natural base here, though Reimagined tuned moodier serves players who want vistas without darkness penalties.
An exploration configuration
| Area | Direction |
|---|---|
| Profile | High if your PC sustains it in open terrain |
| Atmosphere / fog | Fuller, depth and mood are the point |
| Water | Reflections high; shores and sunsets carry scenes |
| Shadows | Resolution up for dramatic terrain light |
| Block light | Glow generous, caves and night camps feel alive |
Switching between the two moods
You cannot save named custom profiles inside the pack, but you have two practical mechanisms:
- Use the two styles as your two slots. Keep Reimagined tuned for building and Unbound tuned for exploration, each style stores its own settings, and switching takes seconds. This is the cleanest two-configuration system the pack offers.
- Keep a written note of your handful of changed values per mood. The settings that differ between building and exploration are few, profile, fog, atmosphere, reflections, and a note makes re-applying them a one-minute job.
The general tuning method behind both configurations is in the best settings guide.
A third mood: underground
Neither configuration above is built for the hours most survival players actually spend below ground. Caving and mining have their own brief: you need to read ore and stone honestly, judge depth and drops safely, and keep darkness atmospheric without making it dangerous through invisibility.
| Area | Direction |
|---|---|
| Block light | Glow generous, torchlight should carry a working radius you can plan around |
| Ambient fill | Moderate, enough to read a ledge's edge, not so much that unlit depth looks safe |
| Brightness | Your daylight value, unchanged, fix caves with fill and glow, not the global dial |
| Atmosphere / fog | Largely irrelevant underground; leave at your surface values |
| Shadows | Profile default; directional shadow quality is a daylight expense |
The test scene matters here too: judge the configuration in a cave you have not lit yet, at the moment you place the first torch. If you can read the cave's shape but still feel the dark pressing in beyond the light, the balance is right. One trap deserves naming: raising global brightness to fix a cave washes out every daylight scene you already approved. Underground problems have underground dials, use those, and your surface moods survive the trip.
Revisiting your configurations
Configurations are not permanent, and treating them as such is how good setups quietly rot. Three events should trigger a short review:
- A pack update. Settings are stored per style in a file named after the pack's ZIP, so a new version can mean a fresh file and fresh defaults. Your written note of changed values (from the best settings guide) makes re-applying your moods a short job rather than an archaeology project.
- A new project type. A configuration tuned for a cottage build will mislead you on a cathedral: scale changes which settings matter, especially shadow distance and fog. Re-judge in the new project's own scenes.
- A hardware or display change. A new monitor or GPU moves your honest top profile. Re-run the picking method rather than assuming the old ceiling still applies.
Each review is the same small loop: pick the scene, change one dial, judge, note. Ten minutes, a few times a year, keeps both moods exactly where you left them, deliberately.
One more trigger deserves a place on the list: playing with other people. On a shared server or a friend's realm, your configuration is also how you experience their work, a build judged under heavy grading and dense fog is not the build its maker saw. When visiting rather than building, the exploration mood is the polite default: it shows other players' work closer to how the world presents it, and reserves your builder's clarity for your own plots.
Frequently asked questions
Do settings changes require restarting the game?
No. Pack settings apply live from the settings screen; you can walk out of the menu and see the change in the world immediately.
My build looks different in screenshots than in game. Why?
Screenshots freeze one time of day and one angle, usually the flattering ones. Judge your build across a full day cycle; if a facade only works at golden hour, that is design information, not a settings failure.
Is there a configuration for recording video?
Start from the exploration configuration, then prioritise frame-time stability over peak beauty: cap the profile where your recording stays smooth, since viewers notice stutter more than they notice shadow resolution.
