Story of Vanilla RTX

- This is the (almost) the full story behind Vanilla RTX
- This Patreon page was created today, September 1 of 2022, two years after the initial release of Vanilla RTX, and this is my first post, being posted on the first day.

Started mid-2020 with the goal of adding PBR support for Minecraft's default resources and textures, depending on how you look at it, it can be a really hard, time-consuming task or a quick/relatively easy one, and this is exactly what makes Vanilla RTX different.

If you just want to get something working to get all the ray traced lightning without missing textures, it can be done within a day, I wasn't the very first to do it. Other people also created their own resource packs branded as vanilla before Vanilla RTX, so... why did I start it, and how did it become the most popular one? I wanted something more standard, 16x normal maps used with Minecraft's textures which are also 16x, something that wasn't done properly before mainly because it is a bit harder to do than Minecraft's Heightmaps (which are brain-dead easy to make). Anyway, it wasn't anything serious at first, I simply generated all Normals based off vanilla textures in 20 minutes, you might ask why I've been on it for 2 years then?

Imperfections, nothing ever comes close to hand-painted normal maps for extremely low-resolution textures such as ones in Minecraft, it looked truly awful.
You can find first versions of the pack to see what I mean, either you have it on your hard drive, or you can access it now if you have Golden tier). I published it on mcpedl with the same quick normal maps & single valued MERs (they define metallic/emissive/roughness properties, that means one value for the entire item, which is not optimal.
For one year straight I rapidly reworked each and every normal map while adding support for newer versions up until v1.0.8, I can say it was okay at that point, still not perfect or even good compared to today.

v1.0.9-v1.1.3, Because of popular demand, a subpack was added, using the same files but replacing normals with heightmaps, next version is called 1.4.0 instead of 1.1.4, dropped the middle 1, so it is easier to distinguish major updates and minor updates in future, which was a bit confusing to some but was needed going forward.

In the journey my view got shaped differently to see and to understand pixel art of Minecraft, or let's say, I got better at it (a lot better) & I could spot my previous mistakes and fix them, some of normal maps I drew were logically questionable and most materials were inconsistent and the ones that weren't, it was because they didn't have any real or unique property.

[Now to be real, this isn't to say the pack was bad at the time, it was still better than anything you could find, most packs were default resources with either noisy mess or vanilla textures stacked with greyscaled vanilla textures as bump maps with increased contrast, but it is free community work, I'm not complaining about other creators (but some found automated image processing tools too fun). The point is, I couldn't allow myself to stop there mainly because I too played the game and wanted a perfect experience, and I was aware at that point that no one was even remotely close to doing it the right way, except me.
I wanted "Vanilla RTX" in the purest form (in an objective way).

New Direction:

I. I created a lot of HD textures in past, but I completely missed using the same techniques or way of thinking for Minecraft's low-resolution textures, which is how to give things depth and detail they deserve, or to take a moment and imagine what you want or have a reference for kind of material you want, which was a major problem with all resource packs (e.g. no pack differentiated diamond & gold, which are completely different materials, but use the same shading, or inconsistencies which was completely ignored by everyone, integrity & direction had no place)

II. I recreated the Minecraft map used to demonstrate Minecraft RTX back in 2019 Gamescom, it definitely proved to be a massive waste of time, but in the process it opened my eyes to how Minecraft textures should look, using Nvidia's resources as a baseline, it enabled me to apply the same things in previous paragraph to Minecraft's textures [to give each and every block the depth and texture/feeling it needs] not just some bland, mostly rough world with ray traced lightning or the bare-bones.

With release of 1.4.0 I started updating every single MER (which is still continued) whilst improving both Normals and heightmaps. I kept materials consistent this time around without any logical contradictions. v1.4.0 release included a glimpse of where I was headed, by 1.6.0 around a quarter of materials were nearly perfect. [1.4.0-1.6.0 took an entire year to deliver]

III. So as time went on, I genuinely cared more and more about how things look. Right now, if you place different blocks down with Vanilla RTX, you will notice they have their very very own, unique properties, most have taken hours to perfect out, all of this while keeping things absolutely consistent.

Vanilla RTX also went through several name changes
Truly Vanilla RTX (1.0.0->1.0.9) -> Truly Vanilla RTX Normals (1.0.9 -> 1.5.0) -> Vanilla RTX Normals (1.6.0-1.7.3) -> Vanilla RTX (Current) which I took from a friend, Nicinator who initially made the first Vanilla RTX pack, it was a great one given how it was made in such little time after Minecraft RTX Beta released back in April 2020.
It hasn't been updated ever since Truly Vanilla RTX's release, Vanilla RTX continues to carry the name & remaining true to it's purpose more than ever.

What to expect:

I cannot tell what exactly I am updating next because the way I work is to play the game in various ways or look at your screenshots, find something that looks off or could be improved & make it better than it was. So, in general, everything will get more detailed, closer to perfect and consistent (down to a single RGB digit).
I do have a private list however, where I write about things that must be updated/how they must be updated, so there won't be a chance that I miss something.

Thanks to my writing skills, I failed to answer all of the questions I myself asked in the second paragraph: So how did it become the most popular one?

To answer that, content creators on YouTube using Minecraft mods is a great source for people to find good resource packs, and the funny thing is, Vanilla RTX has had a little to no promotion from YouTubers, even when they use it.
I believe people discover what is high quality and what is not, so no matter what happens, Vanilla RTX is & will be found by all users, eventually, because if anyone wants to play Minecraft RTX with vanilla resources, Vanilla RTX is objectively the best.

Will Vanilla RTX ever be done?

Short answer is no.
Vanilla RTX has came a long way, but there is an even longer road ahead, I estimate it will take 3-4 years to fully perfect it, once we're there, updates will only add new blocks.
Aside from that, animated PBR textures and entity PBR might become a possibility any moment, though I expect it to be in the (very) far future.

Thank you for reading, and for your support, the major force that pushed me to maintain Vanilla RTX & to make it great was the number of people downloading it (over a million while writing this) and kind comments, especially the ones that express to understand the time that went into making it what it is or appreciate the quality of work, makes me think it isn't a waste after all and someone out there really does notice the small details, it is a boost.

TL; DR

It was a cycle of creating, understanding what to do better & doing better. I believe it's at the end of cycle which is improving everything to a point where it cannot be any better. Until the day PBR for entities arrives, there will be a lot of work to do.

I tried to give some hints, I am also going to make it brutally clear here, I saw others weren't doing a good job, I knew what is possible, it was time to bring in something with proficiency & actual effort (and NOT just ripping Minecraft's art resources then pass them around without any real addition, which was mostly what you'd find)

The Objective Right Now:
1. Having Vanilla resources, as they are, for ray tracing, down to the color of fogs or water, in a way that you get a sense that this is officially from Mojang/Nvidia. I determine some of material properties based on official Vanilla RTX used to demonstrate Minecraft RTX back in 2019 or in Marketplace worlds, that was as far as we got to see how official Vanilla RTX would look like, you might notice some textures (e.g. prismarine, sea lantern, planks) are similar to the ones seen in marketplace. Think of it as remastered, improved & updated resources for Minecraft RTX, created with the exact same style as official ray tracing packs.
2. Having full consistency, without logical contradictions.