LexBoosT's edit of BSL Shaders for players who want more than realistic lighting. It adds a long menu of optional effects, from cel shading, CRT scanlines and heat haze to a planet in the night sky, and nine profiles ranging from quality tiers to retro TV and PlayStation-style looks.
AstraLex Shaders is a shader pack by LexBoosT, built as an edit of BSL Shaders with the permission of BSL's author, Capt Tatsu, and of EminGT, the author of Complementary. It keeps BSL's core (real-time shadows, volumetric light, ambient occlusion, bloom, water and clouds) and hangs an unusually long list of optional effects on top of it. The pack's own one-line pitch is that if you like effects, it was made for you, and the settings menu bears that out.
LexBoosT's previous project was LexShino Shaders Remade. AstraLex began as a BSL edit carrying LexShino's options and modifications, first under the name BSLex. The author renamed it after that name caused confusion with the base shader. So the lighting, shadows and water behave broadly like BSL's, and most of what makes AstraLex different sits in menus BSL does not have. The caustics under water are credited to EminGT. The project has been on CurseForge since September 2020 and has passed 9.6 million downloads there, alongside about 5 million on Modrinth.
In practice that makes the choice simple. For BSL's look with a short menu and current releases, use BSL itself. AstraLex earns its place when you want the game to look like something else entirely: a cartoon, an old television, a sky full of planets.
The pack's profile selector holds nine entries. Low, Medium, High and Ultra are quality tiers: Low and Medium switch off ambient occlusion, light shafts, parallax, self-shadowing, refraction and the raindrops on screen, and High brings them back. The other five are looks rather than quality levels. LexBoosT is the author's own preset, built on Ultra with extras such as emissive flowers. Borderland + adds the outline style, Old TV and Old TV B&W switch on the CRT scanlines and screen border, and Playstation 1 is a retro preset named after that console.
One detail matters for slower machines. Motion blur stays on in every profile, Low included, so switching it off by hand is worthwhile whichever profile you start from.
The author lists dozens of additions. Grouped by purpose, the notable ones are:
With this many switches, the pack rewards a slow first visit to the settings, turning effects on one at a time to see what each does.
Below the headline effects, AstraLex also reworks the basics BSL already had. Water gains a blur with its own strength setting, refraction, a Fresnel option and the caustics mentioned above. Lighting is slightly brighter than stock BSL, stars are brighter, and there is an HDR option and an ACES tonemap, with TAA or FXAA for anti-aliasing. The End gets fast-moving clouds, dithering and a redesigned portal, lightning renders properly with the shader on, and lens flare is switched off underwater.
No official performance figures exist for AstraLex, and results depend on your hardware, render distance and which effects are on. What the settings make clear is where the cost sits. Shadow quality offers an option labelled Quality Offsets, running from OFF through NORMAL and HIGH_QUALITY to EXTREME, and shadows are usually among the most expensive parts of a BSL-based pack. Depth of field has a blur quality choice between 60 and 119 offsets, and the higher setting uses nearly twice as many. Volumetric light, motion blur and screen-space effects such as refraction and raindrops all add work every frame.
If the pack runs slowly, lowering shadow quality and turning off depth of field and motion blur are the first steps, before touching the lighter cosmetic effects. Pairing Iris with Sodium keeps the rest of the game's rendering as cheap as possible.
The newest AstraLex release on both Modrinth and CurseForge is V93.0, published on 16 June 2024. No file has been uploaded since. The author has kept marking that same file as compatible with each new Minecraft release, and it is now tagged for everything from 1.16.5 to 26.3. Shader packs are less tied to a Minecraft version than mods, so an old file can keep working on new releases, but the tags are the author's statement, not a new build.
Iris's issue tracker shows the practical side. In April 2025 a player on Minecraft 1.20.1 with Iris 1.7.6 reported AstraLex failing to load while other packs worked, and suspected a newer Iris would fix it. In May 2026 another player on 1.21.11 with Iris 1.10.7 listed AstraLex among the packs that rendered correctly for them. Keep Iris up to date, and if the pack fails to compile, try it on its own before blaming other mods.
The changelog lives on the author's website rather than on the download pages, and discussion happens in an AstraLex thread on the shaderLABS Discord, a community server for shader developers and players. A problem that appears only with AstraLex belongs there. One that affects every shader pack is more likely an Iris or OptiFine issue.
AstraLex loads like any shader pack in Iris or OptiFine. Iris is the practical choice on current versions, because it pairs with Sodium and usually arrives soon after a new Minecraft version. OptiFine works too wherever an OptiFine build exists for your version. The shader's options menu is the same in both.
The agreement allows screenshots, videos and personal modification. It forbids redistributing the pack without permission, sharing download links other than the official CurseForge and Modrinth pages, renaming it or claiming its code, and using monetised link shorteners. Modpacks and servers need the author's permission to include it, and the author asks to be credited clearly, with a link to the official site where possible.
Like every shader pack, AstraLex runs inside a shader loader: Iris (usually with Sodium) or OptiFine. It is a ZIP file for the shaderpacks folder, not a mod for the mods folder.
Open the AstraLex Shaders Downloads section. There is a single row, V93.0, because one ZIP file serves every supported version on both Iris and OptiFine. Its Download button leads to the official file on Modrinth. Leave the ZIP packed when it arrives.
For Iris, install Fabric or NeoForge and add Iris and Sodium, or use the Iris installer, which sets up a Fabric profile for you. OptiFine users need the OptiFine build that matches their Minecraft version (see OptiFine). Use one loader or the other, not both.
shaderpacks in your game directory.With AstraLex selected, the shader settings button opens its menus. Change one effect at a time, since several of them (cel shading, CRT, cinema mode) transform the whole screen and are easier to judge on their own.
logs/latest.log for shader compile errors.shaderpacks and was not extracted into a folder of folders.resourcepacks or mods is ignored. It only works from shaderpacks.The shader installation guide covers loaders in more detail, and shaders not working goes through the common failures.
No builds match these filters.
Yes. AstraLex is an edit of BSL Shaders, made with permission from BSL's author Capt Tatsu and Complementary's author EminGT. It was called BSLex before the author renamed it.
Yes. AstraLex supports both Iris and OptiFine. Keep Iris updated: some older Iris versions had reported trouble loading the pack.
The author has tagged the newest file, V93.0, as compatible with every release up to 26.3. That file was published in June 2024, so the tag reflects the author's statement rather than a new build.
The newest file, V93.0, was published on 16 June 2024 on both CurseForge and Modrinth. No newer release had appeared by September 2026.
Lower the shadow quality, turn off depth of field and motion blur, and switch off effects you do not use. Running Iris with Sodium also helps.
Only with the author's permission. The agreement forbids redistribution without it and asks that links point to the official CurseForge or Modrinth pages.
There are nine. Low, Medium, High and Ultra are quality tiers. LexBoosT, Borderland +, Old TV, Old TV B&W and Playstation 1 are style presets. Motion blur stays on in all of them, so turn it off manually if you want it gone.
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BSL Shaders is a shader pack for Minecraft by capttatsu, built around real-time shadows, volumetric light, bloom and customizable clouds and water. Its own description is bright, colorful and distinct rather than strictly realistic, and quality profiles are switched in-game rather than by downloading a different file. One download works across the supported Minecraft versions on both Iris and OptiFine.