RTX Remix for Minecraft

Play Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.1 with real-time path tracing on a GeForce RTX GPU, powered by NVIDIA RTX Remix.

What To Expect

This is a beta. It was built as a technology showcase, but we love Minecraft and want it to succeed as a rendering mod. We tuned it against one showcase world, built for this project by BlockWorks (see Showcase World And Materials Pack), and the places that world visits are where it looks and runs best. We have worked hard to fix as many issues as we could, but it ships with known issues, and there are certainly bugs yet to be discovered.

Three areas have had less attention than the rest:

• Other mods. It has had limited testing alongside other mods, and a renderer that takes over the scene the way this one does is likely to conflict with anything that changes rendering or the chunk pipeline.
• A full playthrough. Blocks, mobs, dimensions, and situations the showcase never reaches have had less care, and some will look wrong or run slowly.
• Other versions. It targets Minecraft 1.21.1 only, chosen because that is where the modding community is today. Ports to newer versions are something we hope the community takes on.

We hope the community helps fill it out. If something breaks, report it; if you can fix it, see Contributing.

Download

Download the installer bundle, rtx-remix-renderer-<version>-installer.zip, from the Releases page. It holds the mod, the RTX Remix Materials pack and the RTX Remix Showcase World, and the installer that sets them up.

Install in four steps

1. Extract the installer bundle.
2. Double-click install.bat and follow the menu. Pick a launcher, keep RTX Remix Renderer, RTX Remix Materials, and RTX Remix Showcase World ticked, and press Enter on Continue.
3. Sign in, and launch the NVIDIA RTX Remix for Minecraft profile from your launcher.
4. Open Singleplayer and choose NVIDIA RTX Demo.

The step-by-step version, with launcher advice and troubleshooting, is in Playing.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, x64 or ARM64.
• Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.1, on a Microsoft account that owns the game.
• A GeForce RTX 30-series or newer GPU with NVIDIA driver 616.92 or newer.
• About 5 GB of free disk space while installing; about 3 GB stays in use.
• An internet connection while the installer runs.
• 16 GB of system memory is recommended.

Java 21, Fabric, and the RTX Remix runtime are installed for you.

Building and running from source has its own prerequisites, including Prism Launcher, signed in to a Microsoft account that owns Minecraft: Java Edition.

Crash Reports And Privacy

The mod collects no data of its own. The RTX Remix runtime it carries can send basic session information and crash reports to NVIDIA. Its First Use Guide asks about both, with both on by default, and the Permissions tab of the RTX Remix Graphics Settings menu changes them at any time. Crash Reports And Privacy lists what is sent.

What it does

Every block, mob, and item is lit by a path tracer. Light bounces off walls, through glass, and out of torches the way it does in a film renderer, so shadows, reflections, and the colour a nearby block casts on its neighbours are all computed rather than painted in.

The look follows the game. Time of day, weather, and being underwater each bring their own lighting, and a map author can attach a look to a place in the world. Nothing needs switching on.

A new block. The Copper Beacon is a directional lamp you can place or carry, and its beam is a real light that picks out walls, rain, and anything standing in it.

Camera flythroughs. Record a path by walking it, then replay it, for a video or for an exact before-and-after comparison.

A settings screen in the game. Distances, framerate, sky, lighting, exposure, and materials, all in Options, with no config files to edit, and a button into Remix's own Graphics Settings for the quality tier.

Showcase World And Materials Pack

Two extras go with the mod. Each release carries both, inside the installer bundle and as files of their own, and the installer puts them in place. The developer launcher in tools/ downloads both the first time it runs and launches into the world with the pack on.

• RTX Remix Materials, a texture resource pack created by an art team at NVIDIA, is the look the renderer was made for, and the recommended way to play. The installer turns it on above the textures built into the mod and below your own packs. Without it, the mod's built-in baseline textures give vanilla's textures simpler materials. Its normal and specular maps follow the LabPBR standard, so other renderers and shader packs that read LabPBR may be able to use it too, but it has only been tested with this mod. Its _sss subsurface maps are this mod's own addition, described in Resource Packs.
• RTX Remix Showcase World, the map the renderer was tuned against, was built for this project by BlockWorks: website, YouTube, X, and Instagram. The installer unpacks it as NVIDIA RTX Demo under Singleplayer, and never overwrites a copy you already have.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗