Compare Complementary Unbound, Photon, Bliss and Noble for lighting, reflections and material appearance. Each shader handles textures differently. You can also use the mods without shaders.
Start with Complementary Unbound.
For the enhanced stone, glass and metal treatments described here, use a recognised Complementary profile with Iris and labPBR materials. The 32x and 64x packs add artwork detail; they are optional.
Use Complementary Unbound for ERYDON’s enhanced stone, glazing and metal effects. Complementary Reimagined has different default settings; selected releases also support these effects.
Stone finishes: choose Honed, Polished or Ganosis for all 27 fresh-stone families, with separate Herringbone, Weave and inlay settings. With ERYDON installed, the shared choices also apply to eligible Themelios and Daedalon pieces.
Metal detail: bronze and silver keep their own colour and surface response, with sharper reflections and concentrated sunlight glints on supported profiles. Stone and metal keep independent finishes.
Recessed inlays: supported POM paths place metal below the stone surface, with groove walls and local shadows. Paths that cannot support this retain the normal surface overlay.
Continuous relief: POM depth and self-shadowing follow the connected stone pattern across block joins and small architectural faces, instead of restarting on each piece.
Glass and windows: stronger reflections keep the glass tint, while two-way windows use a stronger exterior mirror and normal Crystal glass inside. Glass settings remain separate from frame polish.
Gloss covers and ceilings: White and Black Gloss use Ganosis; Silver Gloss covers form opaque mirror cladding; Bronze Gloss keeps its coloured metallic response. Coffered-ceiling stonework keeps its selected finish.
Column reflections: eligible circular, Gothic and square columns can appear in supported world-space reflections. The shader represents them with a square-block approximation, rather than their exact carved shape.
How to use it
Use Iris and a supported Complementary release, with labPBR/custom resource-pack materials enabled. In Mods → ERYDON → Configure → High polish, enable the controls and choose your stone and Glass settings, then save and restart Minecraft. Enable the shader’s POM and normal mapping for relief and recessed inlays. Choose Matte or Gloss on covers and ceiling insets with the debug stick.
Version notes and limitations
Checks cover recognised shader releases, with in-game checks of bronze inlays, gloss covers and glazing. They do not cover every shader update or optional setting; consult the linked version notes before updating.
Unbound and Reimagined r5.9.3 support the enhanced metal path. Supported development profiles include Unbound r5.9_dev5, r5.9.4_dev1 and r5.10_dev2, and Reimagined r5.10_dev3. Earlier r5.6.1/r5.8.1 profiles and Unbound r5.9_dev2 support stone, glazing and POM adjustments but keep native metals; r5.5.1 keeps native rendering. Other updates or edited shader files may also fall back to native materials. Column reflections need world-space reflections in a supported shader profile and use the square approximation described above.
Choose Photon for its own lighting and reflections, using the material maps in your active textures.
Uses the material information provided by the active textures.
Its own shader lighting and reflections.
No ERYDON-specific Honed / Polished / Ganosis enhancement.
How to use it
Use the author’s supported Iris build and material settings. Compare the same scene and pack before choosing a style.
Version notes and limitations
These notes cover Photon 1.3b and its native material response. The additional ERYDON finish effects described for Complementary do not apply to Photon.
Do not expect the High polish menu to produce Complementary’s additional reflection treatment in Photon.
Bliss adds changing weather, atmosphere and its own lighting. Compare its material appearance in the same scene before choosing your settings.
Native specular material information remains available.
Its own lighting, weather and atmosphere.
Uses its own material response rather than ERYDON’s extra polish effects.
How to use it
Choose an official release first. If inlays disappear with POM enabled, compare with POM switched off and include the exact shader and pack in a report.
Version notes and limitations
With Bliss 2.1.2, turning POM off restored inlays affected by a rendering issue. Corrected overlay maps still need a matching in-game check with POM enabled.
Bliss does not provide the same enhanced finish as the supported Complementary profiles. Results vary with its release and material settings.
Noble gives stone and metal its own lighting and reflection treatment. Check the version notes below before setting it up.
Its own interpretation of the supplied PBR maps.
No ERYDON-specific polish or glazing patch.
Stone and metal can look different from the Complementary examples.
How to use it
Use a release supported by the author for your device and Iris version. If a shader error appears, include both version numbers and the error when asking for help.
Version notes and limitations
An older Noble-master archive produced an Iris fog-type error and handled plain-stone reflections differently. A newer release may behave differently; these notes do not confirm that a replacement fixes those issues.
POM and inlay rendering have known version-specific issues. Use supported Complementary profiles for ERYDON’s enhanced material effects. Noble’s author does not list macOS support.
A smooth stone surface without the extra Ganosis reflection treatment.
Ganosis
The stronger mirror-like stone treatment on a supported Complementary profile.
All 27 stones use the same Honed, Polished and Ganosis controls in Mod Menu. These choices apply to fresh stone, Herringbone, Weave and supported inlays; aged stone, rough masonry and Diaphanes keep their own surface treatment. Metal, glazing and two-way coatings remain separate. Save and restart after changing High polish settings.
Synapheia is the connected-texture engine built into ERYDON and Themelios. Its Greek name means “connection”.
Connected textures (CTM) join neighbouring texture tiles into a larger surface. Stone veins continue across a wall, while matching inlay borders meet at edges and corners.
Arches, cornices and slopes contain small faces and projecting parts that can cross a block’s boundary. Treating each face separately can restart the pattern or leave a join out of place. Synapheia was built to map the finished shape, keeping its texture aligned with surrounding blocks.
For your build, that means:
Continuous stone across supported arches, corners, sloping surfaces and large spiral stairs.
Matching inlays across supported full blocks, multiface layers, stairs and slopes where their visible faces meet.
Aligned colour, surface relief and metal highlights when using supported shaders.
It reuses shared texture rules and nearby-block checks, and handles ordinary faces directly to avoid repeating complex work for every face.
No separate Continuity installation is needed for these Collection surfaces. Other mods and packs may still need their own connected-texture setup.
Keep the world, camera, light, texture pack and shader settings fixed. Change one option, then compare a room and an outdoor view. The photographs show how a scene can look. Your shader, settings and computer affect both its appearance and frame rate.
