Skip to content

Add Water Reflection Intensity setting #381

Open

Description

@seasky2

Suggestion

Add a new slider setting called "Water Reflection Intensity" in the Water Settings menu, next to the existing "Water Refraction Intensity".

Motivation

Currently, Complementary has "Water Reflection Quality" (which changes the reflection method) and "Water Refraction Intensity" (which controls refraction strength), but there is no way to control the intensity/strength of the water reflections themselves. Some users find the reflections too strong for their taste (especially on Unbound water style) and would like a subtle reduction without fully disabling reflections via WATER_REFLECT_QUALITY = OFF.

Suggested implementation

The value is applied at the correct shared point for all water render paths (gbuffers_water, dh_water, and voxy_translucent), so a single multiplier works for vanilla, Distant Horizons and Voxy water:

  1. In lib/common.glsl, alongside the other water options:
#define WATER_REFLECT_INTENSITY 1.0 //[0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0]
  1. In lib/materials/specificMaterials/translucents/water.glsl (Step 4: Final Tweaks), apply it to reflectMult:
reflectMult *= (0.5 + 0.5 * NdotUmax0) * WATER_REFLECT_INTENSITY;
  1. Register the option in shaders.properties (screen.WATER_SETTINGS and the sliders= list) and add a display name in lang/en_US.lang.

Behavior

  • 1.0 = current/default behavior (no change)
  • 0.0 = removes the reflection blend completely
  • Intermediate values scale the reflection strength smoothly

I have tested this locally on r5.9.3 with Iris + Sodium + Voxy and it works as expected. Happy to open a PR if this is something you'd consider.

Activity

  1. SpacEagle17 commented on Oct 30, 2026

    @SpacEagle17
    Member

    Sorry but this sounds so AI generated for a simple value multiplier....

  2. seasky2 commented on Oct 30, 2026

    @seasky2
    Author

    I used AI to help me make the change, because I felt that was missing from the shader.

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions