Why does glass or water look black or opaque with Optimum Realism + shaders

Black glass/water is almost always Sodium's translucency sorting, not a broken pack. Update Sodium to 0.6+ (it added proper translucency sorting), keep the shader's water/translucency settings on, and confirm the shader's PBR mode is LabPBR.

Still seeing it?

When does it go black?

Classic Sodium translucency-sorting issue. Sodium older than 0.6 doesn't sort overlapping transparent faces, so stacked glass and water render black. Update Sodium and Indium to current versions.

  1. Update Sodium to 0.6+ from Modrinth (it added translucency sorting)
  2. Update Indium to match
  3. Restart — stacked glass and water render transparent again

Sodium on Modrinth

The shader's translucency/water rendering is off or set to the wrong PBR mode. Open shader settings → set PBR to LabPBR, and make sure Water and Translucent/transparency options are enabled. A deferred-rendering shader is more prone to this than a forward one — Complementary uses forward rendering and tends to avoid it.

Which shader works best

Same translucency-sorting family — update Sodium to 0.6+. If a single tinted layer is still dark, confirm no other resource pack is overriding the glass texture from above your pack in the list.

Pack priority / override issues

Related
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