Vanilla RTX v1.21.30 (Release)

Hey everybody! Minecraft's Tricky Trials update is around the corner, and Vanilla RTX 1.21.30 is here to complete support for all of the latest 1.21 content (that is, assuming Mojang doesn't add or change anything!) you can expect this update to be the one with complete day-one support for Minecraft 1.21.


Outside the topic of Minecraft 1.21, this update brings functional animated textures! There are also numerous quality improvements with some more experimental bug fixes for Minecraft with RTX.
Let's continue with the in-depth changelogs below to understand all about this update.

Vanilla RTX & Vanilla RTX Normals v1.21.30 / Release Notes:

• Added full support for Ominous Trial Spawner and Ominous Vault block.

• Updated non-ominous vault block and trial spawners according to their texture updates in Minecraft Preview 1.21.23.0
- Also fixed trial spawner active state being unsupported in latest Minecraft Preview.

• Updated smoker, revamped normal maps, improved heightmaps and added proper animated emissivity for its burning animation with better materials for consistency with other wood and stone.

• Quartz Normal Map Revamp
Most notably, quartz and smooth quartz will no longer appear curved/convex, this is to allow smooth quartz to form seamless tiles (like its vanilla texture!) while keeping a consistent normal style for quartz. Also corrected quartz bricks and chiseled quartz normal maps.


• Fixed dropper top horizontal incorrectly using dropper top vertical MER (and the other way around).

• Added a cached texture and files list, this could potentially improve load times or help prevent an issue where textures aren't fully loaded or lost, which has happened in the past likely because of large number of files in Vanilla RTX. (This change will be reverted if it proves unnecessary)

• Animated Material Update!
Not long ago animated textures were fixed in Minecraft, prior to this, PBR textures were based on an average of all stages of a given animated texture, this allowed it to approximately look good throughout all stages of an animated texture.
This update comes with proper animated textures for many animated blocks.
(Known issue: this bug persists with sculk catalyst blooming state and sculk shrieker)
For emissive blocks, this usually results in improved vibrancy & allows true texture colors to be preserved throughout the animation, or in other words less washed out colors.

- Magma block
- Blast Furnace
- Sea Lantern (Also updated materials to better match other prismarine blocks)
- Portal and Respawn Anchor Top Portal
- Lantern and Soul Lantern (Also nerfed overall brightness of soul lantern)
- Cauldron water, also changed to a new material that closely matches regular water (Known issue: non-colored water in cauldron does not have a material)
- Sculk Tendrils, also updated normal maps and heightmap animations
- Sculk Veins, materials now appear more consistent with other sculk blocks.
- Sculk
(Note: I'm aware of some inconsistencies in sculk, a future overhaul will universally refine and unify all sculk blocks)
- Sculk Catalyst Blooming
- Sculk Shrieker Top
(Note: Sculk shrieker and Catalyst in particular do not have proper animations, however they have been improved in other ways to make up for lack of animated PBR materials)
- Rough Prismarine
- Crimson and Warped log, also improved heightmaps
- All variations of Command blocks
- Campfire and Soul Campfire base (Note: this only affects their base/burning coal parts, not fires themselves, animation update for fire and soul fire are set to arrive with a future update), also removed some unnecessary files.
- Chemical Heat block in Education Edition


• Reworked Netherite and Ancient Debris, new handmade normal maps, improved heightmaps and redefined materials.

• Updated Iron block and Lapis block normal maps to be in-line with appearance of similar blocks (i.e. gold block, copper block, etc...)

• Updated mossy stonebrick and stonebrick normal maps with better defined cracks and mossy parts

• Adjusted default fog settings to be closer to default Minecraft RTX sky colors (i.e reduced the subtle green/cyan color of sky horizon in some biomes), removed blue tint.
(Notes: I'm aware of other issues like water appearing inappropriately discolored in certain biomes such as some of rivers, all similar problems will be addressed in a future grand fog overhaul)
These changes are only meant to get things in a better state for the time being, until I have the chance to go over everything thoroughly.

• Other adjustments
- Overall dimmer comparator and repeater active states so they may no longer be functional as light source (vanilla light level is 0)
- Decreased intensity of all plank-type normal maps and corrected angles
- Uniformly increased lava emissive intensity, increased lava normal map intensity.
- Adjusted redstone, regular and soul torch texture brightness (redstone and soul nerfed, regular torch slight buff)
- Nerfed all passive redstone materials emissivity, with less contrasting colors
- Decreased heightmap intensity of foliage such as grass and ferns to more closely match grass top
- Maximized portal transparency (further reduction of opacity will result in issues with screen overlay animation of portal)
- Decreased cauldron water opacity
- Adjusted all gold blocks and white irons, now possessing slightly more metallic characteristics (i.e. iron doors, block, gold parts on rails, gold block, gold parts on chiseled bookshelf, all gold ores, etc...)
This also makes white irons more distinct from grey irons, where grey irons now appear slightly less metallic and more rough overall, while retaining the same detail and style as white irons.

• Updated pack icons!

▣ Experimental:

• Fixed blocks in Command Block Minecart and TNT Minecarts not being affected by ray tracing.

• Moved away Slime mob texture and End Portal adjustments from default Vanilla RTX, they are now available only under Experimental option.

• Improved the workaround fix for Breeze wind
- Inner layers are can now be visible (previously only the outermost wind layer was displayed)
Breeze wind appears more transparent with ray tracing to better match vanilla game
Known issues:
- Brightness of breeze is affected by vanilla light level, and not ray traced lighting, brighter
environments also make breeze wind appear more opaque.
- Inner layers do not display when looked at through the outer layers.

• Swapped sun and moon paths, sun now maintains a positive offset, reduced maximum offset to 30 degrees and further improved smoothness of the transitions.
Notes:
These changes are meant to help ensure this alternative sun path is appealing to more of Minecraft player base, the goal of this change is to get it closer to vanilla Minecraft while still getting the benefits of the sun no longer being aligned with the rest of the Minecraft world.

• Fixed Iron Golem damaged stages not displaying with ray tracing, removed cracks being overlays and instead each cracked stage now has its own complete texture, this will eliminate the issue and should remain visually the same as vanilla Minecraft.

Finishing Notes:
And there it is! third major revision of Vanilla RTX 1.21. I don't have any extra side notes about this update, so in order to not get bored, let's have a little look a few of major items that are planned to come with future updates:
- Complete Glass rework, making glass colors and transparencies truly match vanilla game once and for all. (This isn't exclusive to glass, it applies to all general glass-like items, like ice, slime, portal, etc..).
- Revamped fire
- A lot more experimental fixes for the game, and improvements to existing fixes.
- Sculk Consistency check and corrections.
- A Grand fog overhaul with varying yet fitting fog configurations for every single biome.
- Son of Jay Update
- Wood unification (finally eliminating the disparities of wood between Vanilla RTX and Vanilla RTX Normals, and settling for a middle ground)
- Completing unfinished fixes from Minecraft RTX Fix Pack v3 that never saw the light of the day, and adding them into experimental option. 

This was just a part of it, honestly, looking at the full list is dreading, at times I find myself doubting that I can properly complete Vanilla RTX before facing my untimely end by a shark encounter or before I freeze to death buried in powdered snow.
But hey! given enough time, we'll get there, and you can come along for the ride.
To be clear, I will only consider Vanilla RTX 'finished' or 'complete' when I am confident it meets the criteria and level of quality to serve as the default appearance of Minecraft with RTX.

I'll soon see you all again in a post for a high-fat Vanilla PBR (Deferred Lighting) update, stay tuned!