Why does stone or variant blocks look grey and desaturated in Optimum Realism

Optimum Realism ships custom colour variants for stone, terracotta, calcite, basalt, and other variant blocks. Without the right mod, all those variants fall back to a single flat grey tone.

Install the Polytone mod (Fabric). It's a client-side Fabric mod that lets resource packs define custom block colours and biome tints. Without it, Optimum Realism's overrides are ignored.

Still seeing it?

Which setup are you running?

This is the normal case. Polytone needs to be installed alongside your other Fabric mods.

  1. Download Polytone for your exact Minecraft version from Modrinth
  2. Drop the .jar into .minecraft/mods/
  3. Restart Minecraft. Stone variants, terracotta, and biome-tinted blocks now render with Optimum Realism's intended colours.

OptiFine handles custom block colours natively through its CTM and Custom Colors features — Polytone isn't needed. If you're on OptiFine and still seeing grey stone, update to the latest preview.

Forge doesn't have a clean Polytone equivalent. For full Optimum Realism on Forge, switching to Iris + Fabric is the cleanest option.

Bedrock handles colour variants through the game engine. If you're seeing grey stone on Bedrock, either you're on an old game version or the pack didn't fully load — re-import the .mcpack file.

Related
Why does "ENABLE CONNECTED TEXTURES" appear written on Minecraft blocks?Why do mobs look chunky or wrong colour in Optimum Realism?What mods do I need to run Optimum Realism on Iris + Fabric?Should I use Iris or OptiFine for Optimum Realism?

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