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Resource Packs

JellySquid edited this page Apr 28, 2025 · 7 revisions

OptiFine Compatibility

Many resource packs depend on functionality that has historically been provided only by OptiFine. For these resource packs to work correctly with Sodium, some additional mods may need to be installed. For more information, see the Installation Guide.

Core Shaders

Minecraft's internal shaders are referred to as "Core Shaders" by the community. Some resource packs provide replacements for the game's internal shaders, which is not supported when using Sodium. You may receive an in-game warning when attempting to load these resource packs.

While Mojang technically allows resource packs to modify internal shaders, they have been very clear that doing so unsupported and unstable. This means the shader interface may change between updates without there being a bump in the resource pack version, and that resource packs using core shaders could break suddenly with updates.

Because these internal shaders are, well, internal to the rendering implementation, it is generally not possible for any alternative renderer to provide compatibility with them. To be clear, the reason Sodium doesn't support replacing internal shaders is because doing so is impossible.

Furthermore, this form of modification is extremely limited due to the lack a proper graphical pipeline. This means that implementing even the most trivial of graphical effects with a resource pack will result in a performance penalty. For example, changing the render layer of a block (so that a block which is normally opaque can be transparent) will severely damage your frame rate, because it replaces the shader for all of the solid blocks, and disables critical optimizations on the GPU.

Alternatives

If you are using a resource pack that provides replacements for internal shaders and which does not work with Sodium, it may be possible to replace it with a well-supported, performant, and stable alternative instead:

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