Daybreak — Horizon shader pack

Daybreak by hildlabs is written from scratch in Horizon's own shader format, and its pitch is restraint. It runs inside Horizon's renderer, so culling, batching and LOD stay Horizon's job, and the pack tries to add as little GPU time as it can. That makes it a sensible first shader pack in Horizon, and a good match for mid-range cards: the registry tags it "medium" and "lightweight".

Features

• Sun and moon shadows with smooth edges; mobs catch the sun's shadow too.
• Warm sunlight, blue sky light in the shade, a dim blue night.
• Coloured block light: blue soul fire, red redstone, green copper, froglights.
• Light from a torch in your hand, with Dynamic lights on.
• Waving leaves, grass, flowers and crops.
• Water with waves, reflections, refraction and sun glint.
• A deeper sky with warm sunsets, sun rays, glare and haze; the Nether and the End get their own lighting.

Compatibility and install

Shader pack, version 0.1.1, for Minecraft 26.3. It needs a Horizon build from 2026-11-03 or newer (Nightly 2944480+). Install it from the Shader packs tab of the launcher's Mods page, which puts it in shaderpacks, then pick it under Options > Horizon Settings > Shader Packs. Every effect can be tweaked or turned off in Shader Options. The shader install guide covers the steps.

Limitations

The defaults are soft shadows over 96 blocks plus water reflections, which is not the cheapest setup; on a weak GPU, kill shadows first. Horizon's shader API is still 0.1 and experimental. The code is original, with no Minecraft assets, under MIT.