Minecraft with RTX: First Look at New Ray Traced Worlds, Plus New Guides for Creators

Minecraft with RTX is coming soon for Minecraft players on Windows 10. Our teams have been hard at work, hand-in-hand with Mojang, to bring for the first time real-time ray tracing to Minecraft, the world’s best selling game.

When played on a GeForce RTX GPU, you can experience worlds that are fully path-traced, enabling reflections, shadows, caustics, global illumination, and other realistic lighting effects that interact naturally with physically based textures applied to Minecraft’s blocks. These PBR textures enable per-pixel emissives, volumetric effects, and other never-before-seen sights, that together with the path-traced effects usher in the next evolution of Minecraft. Learn more in our GTC Digital talk, available to view here.

In the past few months, we have worked diligently with many talented creators from the Minecraft community to build the first custom ray-traced worlds. Below is a first look at worlds from Razzleberries, BlockWorks and GeminiTay, creators who were selected due to their active imaginations and fantastic track record of making captivating contributions in the Minecraft community.

These worlds have been designed to showcase the power of real-time ray tracing and the level of fidelity and immersion that is impossible to otherwise achieve.

Check out some examples from the worlds by clicking on the images below to load RTX ON - RTX OFF interactive comparisons.

Of Temples and Totems RTX. By: Razzleberries - An adventure world focusing players on exploring and completing challenges in mysterious temples. Each temple showcases per-pixel emissivity and real-time shadows, and leverages global illumination to create an immersive experience for players.

Crystal Palace RTX. By: GeminiTay. A survival map with a whimsical fantasy theme, that features a masterfully built castle. Ray-traced shadows and beautiful atmospherics create realism in this world built on a 1:1 scale.

Imagination Island RTX. By: BlockWorks. A fully explorable theme park, filled with easter eggs, that hosts four distinct lands, each dedicated to an element of real-time ray tracing. In this scene we see the visitor centre of the park, highlighted by god rays cast in real-time through the windows, shining down onto the floor.

To take full advantage of Minecraft with RTX’s path traced renderer, we’ve added a physically based materials pipeline that enables the creation of block textures with real-world properties. These can be reflective textures or full mirrors, that work with path tracing to reflect surrounding detail. Or they could be emissive textures that emit light of varying colors and intensities. Or upgraded versions of Minecraft’s default textures, only now with normal maps for added depth and detail, making each texture and material more realistic and immersive.

Examples of the new hi-res (1024x1024) and vanilla derivative/low res (16x16) PBR textures applied to Minecraft’s blocks in Minecraft with RTX

If you’re a creator, we’ve put together a presentation and how-to guide that dives into the particulars behind Minecraft with RTX’s path tracing and PBR textures. Learn how PBR and path tracing work together to create incredible sights and discover the step-by-step workflow for creating your own PBR textures and texture packs.

And if you’re a world builder, or have a favorite Java world you’d like to experience in Minecraft with RTX, we’ve partnered with our Minecraft creators to craft unofficial best-practices to convert your world to Bedrock Windows 10 Edition, which is the basis for the upcoming Minecraft with RTX. It’s all fairly straightforward, but before you convert anything please ensure you backup your worlds.

A Minecraft Java world converted to Minecraft Bedrock Edition, now ready to be enhanced with PBR textures and ray tracing in Minecraft with RTX. Credit: @PearlescentMoon

We look forward to seeing your ray traced worlds, textures and creations in the upcoming release of Minecraft with RTX! Stay tuned to GeForce.com for more details.