Complementary Shaders 1.21 → 1.20, 1.20.6 - Download (2025)

EminGT’s Complementary Shaders are useful for both high-end and low-end computers. This is because you can make a seemingly infinite number of customizations in the settings. In addition, the developer is incredibly active and documents everything in great detail. A complete changelog has been updated for several years, and it contains interesting information. You can be sure that every little change is listed there. Apparently, the creator is quite a structured person.

By the way, the pack is a BSL shaders edit, which is also very popular in the Minecraft community. The same goes for the AstraLex shaders, which are also based on BSL and are a good alternative. All in all, hundreds of changes have been made, so you won’t find many similarities when comparing it to BSL.

A well-known example of the successful use of the shaders is the Bare Bones texture pack. The textures look like the official Minecraft trailer if you combine them with the lowest complementary shaders profile. Therefore, you should download both if you want to recreate the trailer.

All Complementary Shaders Versions

Furthermore, there is no information about the PC requirements. Honestly, this is also difficult, because the Complementary Shaders have several versions that have different requirements. They have a big advantage in that you don’t need any technical knowledge. These are all available versions:

• Potato: No shadows and water reflections. In addition, glowing ores are disabled.
• Low: Reduced shadow quality and shadow distance.
• Medium: No specular maps.
• Vanilla / RTX-ish: Realistic vanilla-style settings.
• High (Default): The default setting for new installations.
• Ultra: Additional effects are enabled.
• Extreme: The ultimate Complementary Shaders experience with ray tracing.

You probably know your PC pretty well, so you should know which version you choose in the shader options. If not, start with Potato and work your way up carefully. Also, if you have problems with blurry blocks, a white sky, and crashes, switching to a different version is the solution. On top of that, EminGT has written down the most common issues and their solutions here. If that doesn’t help, you can join the Complementary Discord server. You can find the server invitation link below the download links.

Best Settings for Complementary

Ultimately, the goal of every Minecraft player is to get high FPS. We are experts in this field, so we will show you how to get high FPS with the Complementary Shaders and a low-end PC.

First, you need to check if you have set the maximum frame rate to unlimited in the video settings. Move the slider to the right to do this.

It is also advisable to reduce the render distance. Even extremely high-performance PCs usually can’t handle more than 16 chunks. It’s best to test for yourself which render distance is the most suitable for you.

Now go to shaders in the Minecraft options and make sure that the render quality and shadow quality are set to 1x. This is the default value and should be used in any case.

Then you go to the performance settings. There you activate render regions, fast rendering, and fast math. In contrast, you switch off the smooth FPS.

Optionally, you can reduce the entity distance to 50% in the detail settings and deactivate the anisotropic filtering in the quality settings.

ABOUT PROJECT

Complementary was published on May 24, 2020 and is compatible with these Minecraft versions: 1.21 - 1.20.6 - 1.20.5 - 1.20.4 - 1.20.3 - 1.20.2 - 1.20.1 - 1.20 - 1.19.4 - 1.19.3 - 1.19.2 - 1.19.1 - 1.19 - 1.18.2 - 1.18.1 - 1.18 - 1.17.1 - 1.17 - 1.16.5 - 1.16 - 1.15.2 - 1.15 - 1.14.4 - 1.14 - 1.13.2 - 1.13 - 1.12.2 - 1.12 - 1.11.2 - 1.11 - 1.10.2 - 1.10 - 1.9.4 - 1.9 - 1.8.9 - 1.8

Video & Screenshots

Comparison

Use our comparison tool to compare the Minecraft default pack with Complementary.

How To Install Complementary Shaders

Here’s a simple guide for PC users on installing Complementary in Minecraft Java Edition. If you’re using Minecraft Bedrock Edition and the pack is available for Bedrock/MCPE, you can simply click on the downloaded file to install it.

The Complementary Shaders download links are exclusive to Minecraft: Java Edition. The shaders are not compatible with Bedrock and MCPE, which is why the majority of Minecraft players cannot play with them. Especially Android users would like to see an APK version, but nothing is planned at the moment. That’s because it’s not technically feasible. Therefore, you can only enjoy the aurora borealis and all other effects on the PC. Nevertheless, we have linked an equally impressive free alternative shader for MCPE in the download section. By the way, check out the newer Complementary Reimagined shaders.

Complementary Shaders Download

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