How do these 1997 Graphics Look This Good?!

What makes Riven's 1997 graphics timeless? Concepts and tips you can apply to your own art for stunning results! Value, shading, color theory, and digital painting techniques explained.

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[tb]

The 90's pre-rendered aesthetic is awesome. Technical limitations can have great imaginative results.

[bradonhoover]

Came for a commentary on 1997 game graphics, received an entire college curriculum on color theory more effectively than the actual curriculum

[flamebrindger]

Because it's artistic. Under limitations, less advanced technology, and still talked about to this day. It's beautiful and timeless. With all the tech we have today, I wish pre-redendered graphics came back.

[hex_]

The way you paint lighting is seriously jawdropping. You capture it perfectly.

[AdobadoFantastico]

Didn't know you were a Riven fan. They understood what good values were and made it work. Very admirable project.

[PopFictionVideos]

I was one of the lead 3D artists on a 1996 game called "Bad Mojo". Our approach was similar. We created lots of pre-rendered game screens. We used Form Z and Electric Image on a Mac, and did a lot of touch up painting Photoshop. It was a small crew and we spent almost 2 years in production. Great memories!

[doltBmB]

There is something magical about the old SGI renderman workflow. Things changed when the VFX industry moved to maya, and never really recovered.

[LesterleCheMiDevi]

Since they didn't have Global Illumination with mental ray in 1997, they had to simulate the bounces from the sky, with Ambient Light, you can even see that in the Riven Making Of video, where the preview render has a blue tint on the shadow areas.
So, they had to know what they were doing to get photorealistic renders.

[beninor]

Riven is gorgeous. It's crazy how they were able to get that kind of crazy good graphics back then. Myst was incredible too from a couple years earlier.

[henryglennon]

Nice! I'm an architect and digital painter, and I often do painting studies off of stills from Riven. On top of the excellent shot composition, design, and lighting you mentioned; Riven is especially good for painting studies for one other reason:

Becsuse the game is from 1997, the pixel count is very low compared to a contemporary 4k image. So when you paint bigger, your brain has to add a little more detail, and you can't get easilly overwhelmed by tiny details in the original image.

[Lissbirds]

This game blew my mind back in the day. The graphics were unlike anything I'd seen, and they still hold up. Every frame is a painting. Rand and Robyn are true artists who put so much thought into their craft. The Myst novels have drawings they created to go along with the story, and the artwork is very skilled. Those pencil drawings always stuck with me, because they were both expressive, simple, and efficient all at the same time.

Also, if you can get your hands on the Riven art book, you can see the thought and beauty in the artwork for the game.

[alperozgunyesil]

For me, those games were Grim Fandango and Sanitarium. In an era of limited options, pre-rendered visuals were a blessing for us. Again, amazing video Marco- thank you!

[viceroybolt]

Also worth noting, they *did not* have the color range we have now. Myst and Riven were made for 256 colors, which was impressive for the time!

[daanvaessen]

As an art teacher: wow what a superb video on color theory! Especially the flow chart, great stuff and how you link it to the great compositions from the game. I’m looking forward to the book!

[alejorag]

I'm a software engineer with a passion for videogame development and computer graphics and clicked on this thinking it would be related to those topics and not art itself (since I'm not an artist) but, let me tell you, I was thoroughly entertained lol. It's incredible how Riven still holds up so beautifully and how you were able to passionately explain and capture some of that beauty on this video, will look forward to more of your content.

[MatrixEvolution]

the original Oddworld game also released in 1997 and that had some amazing pre-rendered visuals for its time

[unknowjlm]

Oh man, you managed to solve all the questions I had about the soulful 3d renders of the 90's AND teach me stuff about landscape painting!!

[thomascleveland]

So funny. I clicked onto this video absent mindedly, Started watching this thing about a retro video game, and I was about to tell you that your voice sounds exactly like my favorite art teacher marco bucci

[monsterrun]

Art direction > graphics complexity.

[erik_carter_art]

I loooove Myst and Riven. Such extraordinary artistic accomplishments.