VFXWeaver

VFXWeaver puts a cinematic layer over Minecraft: 60+ effects rendered as post-processing shaders on top of the frame, camera moves, world and entity overlays, screen images and sound. Fire one from a command, build your own in a node editor that opens in your browser, or drive them from a datapack, a server plugin or your own mod.

Client-side only. Nothing to install on the server, no resource pack required.

Try it in two minutes

1. Drop vfxweaver-2.5.0+<minecraft>-<loader>.jar into mods/ (the versions tab filters by game version and loader).
2. Launch a world with cheats on, or be op on a server.
3. /vfx list prints every effect id. Then:

A play lasts a few seconds: run it again to repeat, /vfx stop <effect> to cut it. Any param is overridable in place, so /vfx play vfxweaver:vhs {[intensity:1.5]} is the same effect, harder. Several plays of the same effect stack instead of replacing each other.

Build your own in the browser

/vfxeditor starts a small node editor served by the game itself and opens it in your browser. The effect is a node graph; every param takes a constant, a start/end ramp, keyframes or an expression. The canvas plays live in-game while you drag, the timeline gives one lane per animated param, and Export writes an ordinary data/<namespace>/vfx/<name>.json — exactly what a datapack would contain, so there is no editor-only format and nothing extra to install.

The URL carries a one-time token, the bridge binds to 127.0.0.1 only, and closing the tab does not leave anything running.

What is in the box

• Screen, 40 effects — chromatic aberration, colour grade, distortion, dent, vortex, shockwave, pixelate, halftone, comic, ink, posterize, gradient map, hue isolation, invert, solarize, slice shift, double vision, eyelids, iris wipe, digital glitch, VHS, datamosh, torn edge, spectral, hex grid, scanlines, film grain, motion blur, blur, bloom, depth of field, letterbox, speed lines, vignette, screen flash, accent glow, afterimage, stop motion, noise warp, sky pattern, surface pattern.
• Camera, 3 — shake, dutch roll, field of view.
• World, 7 — block tint, block outline, light beam, pulse ring, guide line, particles, block chain.
• Entity, 3 — tint, outline and displacement by UUID, texture-aware.
• Audio, 4 — heartbeat, hum, noise and volume duck, synthesised on their own audio thread so the frame rate never reaches the sound.
• Images and windows — screen_image draws a picture over the frame (a resource-pack PNG, animated or not). window_create opens a real frameless click-through desktop window showing a picture while the game runs.
• Extras — fog modifier, masks (screen, world and entity volumes, down to custom GLSL plugins), collections (several effects as one), easing curves and keyframes everywhere.

Datapacks

A definition is one JSON file: an effect type, a timeline, params, and optional bindings to the world, the camera or the player. Params animate as a constant, a start/end ramp, keyframes with easing, or an expr, and can read the player's position, look direction or health.

The jar ships 73 ready definitions, one per effect type, so the fastest way to learn the format is to copy one out and change a number. Servers can fire effects over vfxweaver:vfx_trigger and sync definitions over vfxweaver:vfx_sync; packets carry a PROTOCOL_VERSION, and a client silently ignores an incompatible one instead of touching your world.

The datapack used to record the clips on the docs site is public: vfx-demos-showcase.zip. It builds a stage (/function vfx_demos:scene/setup) and plays one looping demo per effect (/vfx play vfx_demos:show_vhs), which is the quickest tour of everything here.

For mod developers

dev.vfxweaver.api.VFXAPI plays, stops, live-tunes and keyframes effects on a player from the server side, and registerImage lets your mod hand the renderer an image it drew itself. The network layout, the definition registry and the full call surface are in docs/API.md.

Requirements

Effects recorded into a Flashback replay play back with it, including looping and persistent ones.

Links

• Guide — commands, every effect and its params, the datapack format, masks, the editor: https://artition.github.io/VFX-Weaver/
• Source and issues — https://github.com/Artition/VFX-Weaver
• Changelog — https://artition.github.io/VFX-Weaver/latest/CHANGELOG/