Vanilla RTX v1.21.70 (Release)

Happy Halloween everybody! A new Vanilla RTX update is now available with early support for the Pale Garden in Minecraft Preview alongside a batch of new quality changes.

Vanilla RTX & Vanilla RTX Normals v1.21.70 / Release Notes:

• Early support for the Pale Garden
- Added full support for the Pale Oak wood set
- Added support for the Creaking Heart, the creaking heart features a subtle glow. An eerie wooden log, imbued with magical properties!
- Added support for the Pale Moss
- Added a placeholder default fog for the Pale Garden. A fitting fog with unique properties will be added in a future update.

Note: Minecraft textures are subject to change with future previews, as such, some of the PBR materials you may come across in this version are placeholders or deliberately incomplete.

• Fog Overhaul
This update lays the foundation for the planned Vanilla RTX Fog Overhaul to arrive, so while visually fog remains mostly the same, a few necessary things were done in this update to prepare for the upcoming changes to fog and to allow the much-needed fog overhaul to move forward.

- Migrated to the new ‘client_biome’ system instead of ‘biomes_client.’ (A placeholder biomes_client is still present to support the current 1.21.30 release of Minecraft; this will be removed in the next update.)
- Updated fog format version to 1.21.0 and starting from now, applicable biomes now use a separate volumetric fog configuration for Weather status.
- Updated all fog names and identifiers to follow a naming pattern similar to vanilla Minecraft.
- Improved clouds, clouds now remain mostly the same across all biomes
- Split fog configurations into 87 new instances with each biome having its own fog configuration. This will be used in the future to define unique and varying fog definitions for every individual vanilla biome
- Removed obsolete biomes identifiers based on valid vanilla biomes in latest Minecraft version.
- Adjusted all fog to use vanilla values where possible.

• Updated appearance of Obsidian-related blocks (enchanting table, respawn anchor, obsidian, crying obsidian and glowing obsidian)
- Revamped heightmaps with a much more well-defined look.
- New handmade normal maps that pack significantly more detail and follow the texture's intended shape.
- Updated the portal material animation on the Respawn Anchor to an average of all stages due to broken PBR animations. Previously, only the first stage was used.
- The Respawn Anchor has been entirely revamped with more logical height maps and normal maps. The enchanting table has also been improved; its textures now properly tile with obsidian and crying obsidian on the sides and bottom.
- Revamped MERs for a more life-like appearance to fit better with their new heightmaps and normal maps.

• Revamped purpur blocks, new well-thought out heightmaps reflecting artist's intent, revamped normal maps and redefined MERs to better represent their connection to chorus fruits.

• Updated the grass top normal map to account for its isometric property. In-game, this eliminates random darker grass squares when light comes from a steep angle (e.g., during sunset) by balancing average vector intensity across all directions.

• Other changes:
- Revised end rod, notably brighter to more closely match its vanilla light level of 14
- Improved overly dark spots on gravel normal map
- Adjusted Moss
- Improved Glowstone normal map
- Adjusted sniffer egg heightmaps
- Adjusted glow lichen emissivity

• Updated all texture set format versions to 1.21.30: This seemingly results in faster loading and might lead to some issues going away.
As a result, Vanilla RTX and Vanilla RTX Normals' new minimum engine version is 1.21.30, make sure you're using at least Minecraft 1.21.30!

▣ Enhanced Option Changelogs:

• Improved some of doors color correction workarounds by using a new method to maximize brightness of their textures
- Added color correction for all variants of copper doors, new doors color corrections are mathematically accurate and made as bright as possible by the distance of brightest pixel to maximum brightness
This allows accurate preservation of color composition of image while making it brighter in a manner that solely counters darkened door issue (MCPE-121412)

• Wither Armor and several other rasterized parts on mobs now appear brighter.

Finishing Notes:

For the past four years, Vanilla RTX has supported every version all the way since 1.16.200 (Nether Update)
That changes with this update, as Vanilla RTX enters a transition period now supporting only 1.21.30 and above.
Starting with Vanilla RTX 1.21.80 and in the coming months, minimum required Minecraft version to use Vanilla RTX will become 1.21.40 and this is likely to remain the same for the foreseeable future.
In short, Vanilla RTX updates will no longer support Minecraft versions below 1.21.30, and 1.21.40 with the next update.

This update also came with the fog format update, weather volumetric fog and some other minor fog improvements which were tough to show! The next update will likely focus on more bug fixes and quality revisions, which provides a necessary time gap before I dive full-time into finishing the glass overhaul or beginning the fog overhaul.

I’d also like to briefly announce a new project I’m working on called Vanilla RTX Fog Tuner—a simple Windows app that lets you tweak fog settings before jumping into the game. Since the fogless option doesn’t seem to cut it for most of you, and having too many fog options within the pack isn’t practical, especially with the upcoming fog overhaul, the best solution is to let players adjust it themselves.

I'm working to get it out to you guys some time in November, if that doesn't materialize as soon as I want it to, I'll greet you all again with the next Vanilla RTX update; until then!