Source Engine Water Shaders for Minecraft 1.20.1, 1.21.1
An Iris shader pack that recreates Source Engine water by reverse-engineering its 2004 and 2007 water-rendering implementations
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- Updated
- Updated 26.09.2026
- 1.7.10 — 26.3
Fabric- Client
Source Water
Shader pack for Iris that replaces vanilla water rendering with a reconstruction of water from Source Engine games. Its goal is to bring the appearance and behavior of classic Source water into Minecraft without turning the pack into a general lighting or art-style overhaul.
The implementation is based primarily on the Source 2007 renderer, with the 2004 renderer preserved as an optional classic normal-animation mode.
The main inspiration for this pack was a random YouTube video about Chinese cs 1.6 F2P version where some Source graphical features was packported. Such as water!
This project contains AI-generated code. See AI_USAGE.md for details.
Recreated Source behavior
- Source's expensive and cheap water rendering paths, with a distance-based LOD transition between them.
- Material-specific surface and underwater fog colors, fog ranges, refraction, reflection distortion, and normal-map flow.
- Fresnel-driven reflections, three-layer Source 2007 normal movement, and the original 29-frame Source 2004 animated normal map.
- Separate underwater material behavior and optional full-screen water warp.
Adaptations
- Source planar reflection render targets are replaced with screen-space reflections for visible scene geometry and a sky fallback when SSR cannot provide a result.
- Source environment cubemaps are approximated with a light-aware Minecraft sky reflection, including the cheap-water path.
- Source-unit fog distances are converted to Minecraft blocks, while the expensive-to-cheap water transition is configured in chunks.
- Vanilla underwater tint and fog are removed so that the selected Source material controls underwater color and visibility.
Included materials
- Half-Life 2 — Canals 03
- Half-Life 2 — Canals Clear
- Half-Life 2: Lost Coast — ATI
- Half-Life 2: Episode One — Riverbed 01
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two — Riverbed 01
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two — Riverbed 02
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two — Silo
- Half-Life 2: Episode Two — Tunnels
- Counter-Strike: Source — Militia
Pairs especially well with Squake.
How to install Source Engine Water
With Millida Launcher
Install Millida Launcher
The launcher is free: download it at millida.net/launcher and sign in with any nickname.
Click “Install” on this page
The launcher opens and installs the shaders for Minecraft 1.7.10–26.3 automatically.
Launch the game
A profile with it appears in the launcher: click “Play”.
Manually
Install Iris
Without a shader mod the game cannot see shaders. Install it for the same Minecraft version.
Download the shader archive
Pick the file Source-Water-1.2.0.zip (1.8 MB) and do not unpack it.
Put it in the shaderpacks folder
“Options”, then “Video Settings”, then “Shader Packs”, then “Open Shader Pack Folder”, and drag the archive there.
Select the shaders
In the same window, click the pack name and “Apply”.
Versions
With dependencies
| Minecraft | Loader | File | Date | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26.3 | Iris | 26.31.8 MB 6 | ||
| 1.21.11 | Iris | 1.21.111.8 MB | ||
| 1.21 | Iris | 1.211.8 MB | ||
| 1.20.1 | Iris | 1.20.11.8 MB | ||
| 1.19.2 | Iris | 1.19.21.8 MB | ||
| 1.7.10 | Iris | 1.7.101.8 MB |
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