Fancy New Redstone Dust (And finally using non-SEUS shaders)

Hey!

Go check out the new Youtube video:  https://youtu.be/AAdkp4e-WQk

Gameplay-friendly redstone textures. You might remember the old redstone cables that are in the rendering packs (R1-14). They are/look cool but are definitely not very useful for survival because you can barely tell if a wire/box is on or off. Also, some important features of the cables no longer work in newer versions (e.g. the end parts are gone, no male/female end-pieces that used to connect to other blocks e.g. levers, box fans etc.  Also, the custom redstone tint also no longer works since people have moved away from Optifine).

But the main reason for making the redstone dust for this update is that people seem to no longer be interested in nature texture stuff. (The last video got ~3.000 views) People have seen forests, logs, leaves hundreds of times by now so it's no surprise that nobody clicks on a thumbnails like that. So let's hope the redstone is unique/interesting enough for people to watch. The redstone is inspired by a minecraft animation from @amadeusminecraft (not an in-game playable thing, just an offline animation made in traditional 3D software) that was recommended to me by a long-term fan on discord. 

In general, there are so many fake thumbnails on minecraft graphics youtube nowadays. e.g. AI generated thumbnails and lots of fake 3D animations. And judging by the comments, people actually believe that these are actual in-game recordings. So obviously this raises the bar and people won't be impressed by regular minecraft in-game content.

Shaders:

This is the first video without using any SEUS shader lol. That's because they sadly don't support emissive textures and redstone looks super ugly without that.

SHADERS that work well with the redstone:

• RethinkingVoxels r0.1_beta8: Makes the redstone emit real light that illuminates surrounding blocks. No fake glow. It also handles the fast-moving electric arcs extremely well. And it also has nice Depth of Field ( + chromatic abberation + anamorphic lens bokeh).  Downside: huge performance impact. Make sure to use the labPBR texture format and have labPBR emissives enabled etc.

• Complementary v4.3.3: Runs very well. Looks best if you use the Integrated PBR for the redstone. 

• Bliss Shader: Wasn't showcased in the video but it's also a great alternative if you want redstone to emit real light. (enable Flood Fill setting, but it will cause some light glitches.... only really works when no other lightsources are close to the redstone) 

Why so much Depth of Field in the video? Well, because it looks cool and cinematic but for redstone it's nice because it smoothens all the unimportant details in the periphery so that you free some bandwidth to get better video quality in the areas that matter. And in general if a lot of redstone is visible, the entire image is way too busy with all the flickering. That makes it difficult to focus and to direct the viewer's attention to a specific part of the image.

You might have noticed that the new video has way more "vanilla vs modded" video transitions. It was just a test but it might be something unique - to have the vanilla minecraft look fade in and out frequently so that it's clear for the viewer that this is still minecraft and not some random other game/software.

How the redstone works:

Was quite complicated - especially the planning and testing whether or not it's possible to do. There's a lot that has to work together as a whole.

The redstone dust has 39 unique model files + 107 blockstate definitions. The total amount of textures are equivalent to 60+ regular block textures. So yeah it is quite heavy on performance but it might be the most complex block in the game so it doesn't really matter.

The "electric arcs" are just animated transparent textures. There are 3 such animated electric arc textures and they all have 32 frames each (so basically 32 individual textures, one for each frame. The framerate of the animation is capped at 20fps, that's because it's tied to game-ticks. 20fps is actually not that bad especially when you consider that the electric arcs are constantly moving in a jagged, flickering way that hides the low framerate quite well.

The electric arc frames are painted frame by frame manually. Actually there is only one 32 frame animation and the other 2 are just copies with a 1/3 phase offset. 

The redstone power-indication is a bit tricky. Making each power level of the base texture a different brightness would require at least 15 additional textures. They would also all be animated with 32 frames which would make this way too taxing considering that you can indicate the power in different ways.
Currently, the redstone uses the height/size of the electric arcs to indicate the power level. It's not great but runs well. There are only 3 different levels and they are each assigned to multiple power levels. This means you can't tell the exact level but I don't think you need to - and for those who need it, they can press F3 or just use a proper redstone-specific texture pack.

The base of the redstone (where the dots move around) is also a 32 frame texture and in the corner cases (the disk thing) it's 24 frames because the dots on the disk have to move at a different speed. The dots have to move in both directions because there is no way in the game to tell in which direction a wire was placed. It would be nice to see the dots "flow" only away from the lever towards a piston - but that's not possible with a texture pack.

Future plan:

If the redstone video performs better than the last 2 videos  --> more redstone stuff.
Maybe a dedicated full redstone pack, with all redstone stuff overhauled (repeaters, comparators etc)?

Feel free to give any recommendations/ideas about future content on the discord server or comments/messages. It's not easy to find unique ideas that are also possible to realize with the limitations of minecraft.

The Downloads can be found on the Download Pages:   https://www.patreon.com/posts/public-downloads-127596976