Vanilla RTX v1.21.60 (Release)

Hi there everyone, the 6th Vanilla RTX v1.21 revision is here!

This update is primarily about completely overhauling all transparent blocks -- a delicate process that required a long time to complete, but the wait is over! There are also new experimental enhancements and quality improvements to several items bring them up to the Vanilla RTX standard.

Vanilla RTX & Vanilla RTX Normals v1.21.60 / Release Notes:

• Complete Transparent Block Overhaul:

This comprehensive rework that applies to several items, such as all glass in-game, including all colors of different glass variants, hard glass. Blocks with varying opacity levels or uniformly transparent blocks such as Ice variants, slime, honey, etc.. are also affected -- a more accurate way to categorize it is blocks that use blend for their render method.

The goal of this rework was to finally bring together a direct and mathematically consistent conversion for all glass, allowing all glass to retain an accurate, near-vanilla color and transparency with ray tracing.

In-game, this means glass is longer overly vibrant, it changes the color of light that passes through at a similar degree to vanilla game, or other transparent blocks such as ice or hard glass are no longer overly opaque and preserve their vanilla appearance, shades of grey glass are also now functional instead of appearing almost fully transparent.

- Reworked MERs
All glass, hard glass and glass pane MERs now pack much more detail, glass pane top MERs now correctly match their non-pane variants' frames and scratches

- Added normal maps edges for glass and glass panes in Vanilla RTX Normals

- New reworked tinted glass with an amethyst touch!

- Added heightmaps to glass pane tops, improved all existing glass and hard glass heightmaps, glass frames and glass pane tops are now much more detailed.

- Converted all glass pane top colors to remain fully consistent with glass colors when ray tracing is turned on.

- Modified all hard glass textures for ray tracing

- Similar to glass, adjusted ice, frosted ice, slime and honey

• Properly converted portal texture for ray tracing, the texture now has maximized translucency while preserving its vanilla color composition and appearance.

• Revamped pumpkin and watermelon normal maps, improved heightmaps
• Revamped Emerald Block Normal map and adjusted iron block normal map to be in-line with style of similar blocks (such as gold, Netherite, etc..)

• Revamped redstone repeater and redstone comparator normal maps, improved heightmaps and materials.

• Reworked camera block, much more detailed, corrected normal maps and fixed heightmap noise

• Revamped bee nest and bee hive
- New hand-painted normal maps and heightmaps
- Improved MERs, now consistent with honey and packing more detail

• Improved honeycomb normal map and heightmap

• Redefined honey material across all block textures with honey

• Revamped soul sand and soul soil normal maps and heightmaps

• Updated glow berries to emit a significant amount of ambient light, they can now properly illuminate caves similar to vanilla game.

• Fixed a critical issue that prevented resources from being properly loaded in world-settings with majority of pack files going missing. This could've happened at random on certain devices with both Vanilla RTX and Vanilla RTX Normals.
Notes:
This issue might come back with future Minecraft versions, so I highly recommend that you stick to using Vanilla RTX in Global Resources, loading packs in your world will cause the game to try to copy pack's files to your world, which can sometimes cause issues and remain incomplete!
Loading the pack in world is only needed when enabling Education Edition toggle.

• Other Changes:
- Updated acacia trapdoor heightmap
- Fixed noise on polished deepslate brick heightmap
- Removed 1 unused file from Vanilla RTX Normals and
- Greatly reduced brightness of Chemical Heat block to remain faithful to its vanilla properties (0 light level), adjusted transparency for ray tracing.
- Corrected normal values smooth stones
- Readjusted slime and honey for ray tracing, made heightmaps less intense.
- Adjusted pointed dripstone heightmaps, updated pointed dripstone block normal map and heightmap
- Adjusted mipmap/padding parameters, updated manifest UUIDs and texts

▣ Optional Enhancements Changelogs:

With this update, Experimental Option seen in Vanilla RTX v1.20.5 to 1.21.50 has been rebranded to Enhanced.
This update works around a few more issues and readjusts some of the previous bug fixes.

• Fixed End Portal texture adjustments (The hardcoded pixel locations have been moved from 10th and 5th for Normal and MER respectively to 6th and 3rd pixels from top left corner of the end portal image file)

• Disabled entity culling number of mobs and entities, this often applies to large entities such as Ender Dragon or Ravager, static entities like boats and minecarts, and similar entities that don't spawn in bulk, alongside player-thrown entities such as potions, snowball or arrows.
Notes:
In-game, this allows off-screen entities to cast shadows or appear in mirrors.
Entity culling preserves a good chunk of performance in some scenarios and shouldn't be disabled on all entities, future updates will further adjust entity culling where needed.

• Fixed enchanted thrown tridents appearing black
Known issue: The hand-held model appears invisible in first person view mode. The model in player hand appears invisible in all view modes if ray tracing is turned off. This is temporary and may be improved with future updates

• Fixed in-world fireworks rocket texture appearing black (similar issue to enchanted thrown trident)
Known issue: Fireworks will appear invisible if ray tracing is turned off

• Added a new Jack O' Lantern enhancement that allows its emissivity strength to be closer to its vanilla light level by emitting light from all sides.

• Replaced 3D Model of villager levels with a simpler plane to more closely match vanilla game
Note: this was done because it was impossible to make the 3D levels from previous update fit well with other layers and ended up looking strange on some villager clothing variations

• Made Enderman and Magma Cube eyes and lava core of Magma Cube appear brighter

• Further reduced spore blossom ambient particle opacity

• Added carried textures for some transparent blocks: Ice, tinted glass, slime, honey, as well as dripstone and glow berries due to adjustments in this update causing bad UI textures.
This allows the vanilla texture to display in player's inventory without the ray tracing-specific adjustments which were meant only for in-world textures

• Adjusted pointed dripstone and cave vine (glow berry) textures to counter Z-fighting artifacts present in vanilla game. (MCPE-121746)

• Removed Sun Path modifier file from the experimental pack, newer Minecraft versions remove the capability from default and RTX graphics modes and properly isolate the feature to Deferred Lighting graphics mode.

Note: Mojang neglecting ray tracing and instead putting effort in making sure we don't get to accidentally get to use other capabilities not intended for it is NOT funny! This is straight up Trolling!
I bet they deny their own employees water and place to empty their bladder! And we're paying the price! Today's a dark day.

Jokes aside, I hope they plan to officially expose this once more, without blocking it within 6 months -- the new video settings UI in latest previews seems to have room for it, so why not!!?
You can help this feature to return by voting and commenting on this issue here:
https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MCPE-180094 
and here:
https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/4406892103565-Ability-to-change-Sun-Azimuth

Some Notes:
I’ve been wanting to perfect a truly vanilla glass since December of 2022, I’m aware with this version, the new glass colors appear much less saturated compared to version 1.21.50 and earlier versions, which might not be to everyone’s liking. The truth is, the old glass is a relic from the earliest versions of Vanilla RTX, and back then there wasn't much thought behind it, other than making something that 'looks nice!'

The new glass, however, is designed to accurately represent how textures are in vanilla Minecraft, while keeping the degree to which they affect light mostly consistent across all glass -- just like vanilla game.

That said, if you prefer more saturated glass (where light passing through is vividly colored), don’t worry! For now, you can use the Clear Glass Add-On, which is still based on older Vanilla RTX versions, where the glass is much more colorful.
You can find it here: Vanilla RTX Add-Ons | Patreon
The upcoming update for this add-on will also include an option for vibrant glass, ideal for playing with colorful light rays.

One more note: the glass in this version is not yet fully finished. This update gets us about 80% of the way there, another update will finalize everything, nevertheless everything is in a much better state than before,

And lastly—roughly a week ago this Patreon page turned two years old! and I just wanted to thank each one of you. Next major item will be a complete fog overhaul, which I'm wishful to complete before Minecraft 1.22 content (End Update!!?) starts to roll out, so until then, bye!

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Edit - 20/09/2024
There is a minor patch available addressing an issue with character creator skins not showing correctly when using enhanced settings. (Thanks Mamun Tayseer for the report)
Download the updated packages at the end of the post.