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Contour Shaders
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Contour Shaders

by Eleeter • Downloads: 0 • Followers: 0
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Contour Shaders

Contour Shaders brings the clean, vibrant outlines from official Minecraft trailers into the game.

What is Contour Shaders?

Contour Shaders introduces dynamic, color-coded entity outlines to every mob, player, and dropped item in your world.

The outline color matches the mob instead of using a plain black border. For example, Creepers get a green outline and Cows get a brown one, similar to the style used in official Minecraft artwork.

Key Features

  • Clear Outlines: Mobs are easier to see without changing the original game style.

  • Crisp Scaling: Outlines stay clear and keep the right size at any render distance.

  • Trailer Aesthetic: Matches the style of official Minecraft Trailer.

  • Customizable: Tweak thickness, darkness, and distance falloff directly from the in-game shader options.

  • Rainbow Outline Mode: Cycles the outline through rainbow colors, with support for animated or fixed hues.

  • Complementary Base: Built on top of Complementary Shaders to retain standard lighting and water effects.

Requirements

  • Minecraft Java Edition
  • Iris Shaders (v1.6 or higher)
  • A graphics card supporting OpenGL 3.3 or higher

⚙️ Settings You Can Tweak

Setting What it does
Outline Thickness How thick the outline appears
Outline Darkness How dark the outline color is
Base Distance Distance where thickness starts shrinking
Outline on Hand Toggle outline on your held item
Rainbow Mode Enable rainbow coloring on the outline
Rainbow Animated Toggle animated or fixed hue
Rainbow Fixed Color Pick a specific hue when animation is off
Rainbow Speed How fast the rainbow cycles

Quick Installation

  1. Ensure Iris Shaders is installed.
  2. Navigate to: Options ➔ Video Settings ➔ Shader Packs ➔ Open Shader Pack Folder
  3. Drop the downloaded .zip file into the folder.
  4. Select Contour Shaders in-game and click Apply.

Community & Support

For unreleased early access versions, bug reports, or community support, join the Discord server:

Crafty Hub Discord

👥 Credits

  • Shader Base: Complementary Reimagined by Emin (EminGT) and the Complementary Development team. Visit them at Complementary Dev.
  • Outline Development: The custom adaptive outline system was developed by Eleeter and Edren.

  • Concept & Media: Shader concept, showcase, and logo created by Flanzo.

    📄 Licensing & Permissions

  • Complementary Base: Distributed as a Modified Pack under the Complementary License Agreement 1.7.
  • Contour Outline System: The outline algorithms and code are proprietary to Eleeter. Any modification or redistribution of the outline code requires prior written consent.

All Versions

+ Add Version
Name Game version Platforms Published Downloads Actions
26.3 26.2 26.1.x +6
Iris OF OptiFine
1d ago 1
26.3 26.2 26.1.x +6
Iris OF OptiFine
1d ago 1
26.3 26.2 26.1.x +6
Iris OF OptiFine
1d ago 1
26.1.x 1.21.x 1.20.x +4
Iris OF OptiFine
1d ago 1
26.1.x 1.21.x 1.20.x +4
Iris OF OptiFine
1d ago 1
26.1.x 1.21.x 1.20.x +4
Iris OF OptiFine
1d ago 1
26.1.x 1.21.x 1.20.x +4
Iris OF OptiFine
1d ago 1
Contour Shaders v1.0.4.2 (MC 26.3)

Fixed
  • Fixed round "ball" artifacts showing up on the edge of the player's head
when moving the camera, same bug as the hand one but on the head.

What was happening
  • A thin 1 pixel line from the player model sometimes showed up a few
pixels away from the head edge. The outline system drew a full circle
around it, so it looked like a ball stuck to the head.
[1.0.4.1] 1.0.4.1 by Eleeter on Oct 13, 2026
Download
Contour Shaders v1.0.4 (MC 26.3)

Fixed
  • Fixed round "ball" artifacts appearing on the edge of the hand outline,
mostly when moving the camera fast.
  • Fixed the same ball artifacts showing up when a mob was behind your hand.
  • Fixed outline checks reading past the edge of the screen.

What was happening
  • On MC 26.2 and 26.3, a single stray pixel sometimes showed up just outside
the hand or mob. The outline system drew a full circle around it, which
looked like a ball stuck to the outline.
# Contour Shaders — Outline Overhaul

Finally! got around to fixing and upgrading the entire outline system. took a while but its in a much better spot now.


## Fixes

  • Hand Outline Disappearing Behind Mobs**
This one was most annoying bug for a while. The problem was that entities and the hand were both writing into the same single channel on colortex9, so when the hand was sitting behind a mob the depth check just killed it with no way to tell the two apart. Split them into separate channels (RG8 now instead of R8), hand gets green, entities get red, and composite2 just skips the depth check entirely when it sees a hand fragment. Completely gone now!!


## Changes

  • Kernel now uses gaussian weights**
Switched from the flat equal-weight sample loop to a gaussian falloff. Closer pixels to the edge boundary contribute more, further ones fade out. Outlines look way cleaner before TAA even runs, no more stairstepping.

  • Depth bias is no longer hardcoded**
The old 0.005 flat bias was always a hack. Replaced it with something derived from the projection matrix so it represents an actual 5cm world-space gap at whatever depth youre at. Fixes the flickering on terrain and the weird culling when mobs stand right on the ground.

  • Entity separation threshold scales with FOV**
The 0.4 threshold that separates overlapping entities was completely hardcoded. Zoom in with a spyglass and it falls apart. Tied it to gbufferProjection[1][1] now so it adjusts based on your actual focal length. works properly from 30 degrees.

  • Outline thickness is now FOV-accurate**
Same problem as above. the old thickness formula would bloat at wide FOV and shrink at narrow FOV. Corrected it against a 70 degree reference focal length so what you set is what you actually see on screen regardless of your FOV.

  • Mask now stores alpha instead of hard 1.0**
Entities and hand were just slamming a flat 1.0 into the mask no matter what. Changed both passes to write color.a instead. Slimes, Spectral arrows, anything translucent now gets a proportionally soft outline instead of a fully opaque border around a see-through mob.

# Changelog

### Added

  • Rainbow Outline Mode** (OUTLINE_RAINBOW) — optional extra color mode that makes the outline cycle through rainbow colors
  • OUTLINE_RAINBOW_CYCLE — toggle animated vs fixed rainbow color
  • OUTLINE_RAINBOW_HUE — fixed hue used when animation is off (0.00 Red → 0.17 Yellow → 0.33 Green → 0.50 Cyan → 0.67 Blue → 0.83 Magenta)
  • OUTLINE_RAINBOW_SPEED — animation cycle speed when OUTLINE_RAINBOW_CYCLE is on
  • en_US.lang entries for all new Contour Outline options and screen

### Fixed

  • Fixed 2-column UI layout gap in CONTOUR_OUTLINE_SETTINGS screen — OUTLINE_DARKNESS and OUTLINE_RAINBOW now share a row correctly instead of OUTLINE_RAINBOW being orphaned to its own row due to a double <empty> token pair between them
[1.0.1] Bug-fix by Eleeter on Oct 13, 2026
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  • Contour Shaders v1.0.1**

A bug-fix release on top of v1.0.


  • What's fixed**

Outlines on overlapping entities now render correctly. Previously, when two mobs overlapped on screen — or when your hand overlapped a mob — the outline would disappear at the intersection. This happened because the edge-detection pass skipped any pixel that belonged to an entity, so mob-on-mob overlap zones were silently ignored.

The outline pass now runs on every pixel. Background pixels use a lenient depth threshold to handle coplanar surfaces like feet on the ground. Entity pixels use a view-space depth comparison converted to real in-game metres, requiring a neighbour to be at least 0.4 blocks closer before drawing — this distinguishes a separate mob in front from natural surface curvature on the same mob, preventing interior self-outlining while keeping all overlap cases correct.

  • Known issue (carried forward, not introduced in this release)**

Outlines may disappear when you are very close to a mob. This is a remaining depth precision limitation and will be addressed in a future update!


  • Compatibility:** Iris 1.7+ · Minecraft 1.21+

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