The Simplest Guide to Ps1 Graphics In Blender

Both beginners and intermediates can struggle with finding out how to replicate the Psx and Ps1 render styles in Blender because a lot of that information is hidden away to sell addons and plugins, so I figured I'd make a video running through everything you need to know for this PSX style in Blender.

Links from the video!!!:

00:00 - Pre-Requisites
00:38 - Modeling
03:15 - Texturing
06:36 - Vertex Colors
08:08 - Fake Lighting
09:42 - Vertex Wobble
12:31 - Important Settings
14:33 - Compositing the Finished Render
15:51 - Outro

[SunnyIsOnline]

This is a super scuffed tutorial that I just felt the need to upload since I did a lot of PSX renders, if you have any questions feel free to ask away, I'm gonna go back to animating more silly things for you great great goobers 😱

Edit: I did NOT expect this video to get so much attention, I promise I will respond to any questions you guys have even despite the viewcount, I like this stuff fr

[sbboh-kcin]

me staring at the pre-req saying "intermediate" and knowing full well I can barely delete the default cube: yeah this is the tutorial for me baby

[redssign]

clicked and watching exclusively because of alex and astrid in the thumbnail, glorious glorious human

[jmalmsten]

A lot of PS1 games kind of circumvented the problem of deforming by just doing action figure like segmented models. For example, the arms and head of Solid Snake were their own geometries that clipped into each other. Using clothing as guides is probably a good approach. And you still need to keep a an eye out for surplus polygons. Like, bottom of the neck, never gonna see it. So why waste polygons on it. And flat image planes with alpha textures means you can do a fairly detailed knife blade of one or two polygons. Another popular trick is to use a flat plane with a circular texture, if you always orient it towards the camera, you get a perfect pixellated sphere with just two triangles. If the hardware can remap the texture coordinates on the fly, you can fake a highlight, glare and shadow on that "sphere".

And, I guess they could also write some compensating code that moves the edge loops during deformation to preserve volume. Another approach, I guess, would be to detach the vertices of the back of the knee at high deformation animations, so the leg bits can keep their volume and just clip into each other. But. If you know there's gonna be a lot of knee bending, it might be worth the extra polys to just get one extra edge loop at the knee. Especially if you can fake geometry somewhere else on the model to compensate.

There are a lot of very clever ways these modelers and animators used to fake geometry and details for low spec hardware.

[Floreum]

You can do dithering in Blender compositor as well, you just need to get a dither texture image. How I do it is after Pixelating the image I use a dither image node (4x4 bayer pattern looks great) > Translate node (Wrap set to Both Axes) > Translate connected to Mix RGB Factor and set to Add. Top color input slot is your render result, bottom is your render also but with a HSV node to control how intense the dithering is. Then connect the Add to another Mix RGB color top input and set to Mix, bottom input is your render result again. The factor is your opacity for the dithering. Then connect to whatever color clamping setup you've got or your final render result.

Unfortunately this will look scuffed in the real-time compositor, so make sure you are looking at an actual render to preview the result.

[TitozThing]

YOURE THE GUY WHO MADE THE FEMTANYL ANIMATION
thats so sick and this tutorial is so helpful omg

[Karter]

blender knowledge "intermediate" okay bye

[jamzee_]

Im still in the process of even making a first model, let alone trying to animate or anything else. Definitely a motivation booster.

[victorianomas]

Music Posting and Femtanyl fan spotted! Good tutorial, very helpful!

[gohchi]

The nervous silence at 15:35 was priceless LOL. Cool stuffs!

[Nositrek]

im still learning blender and i know next to nothing but im super thankful i can use this guide in the future, thanks!

[lofeAbred]

You know what you're doing, period. Links in the description including one to gimp, never expected that, and just an awesome rewatchable video. Thank YOU.

[deegandoesthings]

This is the most helpful tutorial I've ever watched - thanks so

[fetch]

dude idk how but ur channel is like the convergence of my hyperfixations and its crazy. You got Ultrakill, Femtanyl, Music Posting, and Sleep Deprived related content on your channel and its like the perfect combination of shit im hyperfixating on

[jass]

thank you so much for this. there are a lot of videos out there going over this topic but none really explained the depth behind the techniques that you did with this amount of conciseness, and the reasons why some things look the way they do. i'll be having this open the whole time i do my first project like this :)

[ThisIsDownstate]

very nice. i have been doing these graphics for a year now but still learnt something. i always wanted to mimic the vertex shadows so thanks for showing that so clearly. i would also give a shout out for the dripspsx add-on, its really good value for 18 bucks. cheers

[WeaselOnaStick]

5:41 in this case you can just select all faces and use UV -> Reset

[Happy]

the last time i tried to use blender i couldn't figure out how to make a texture for 8 hours. but your voice is incredible so i'm watching the full video anyways

[drakbak]

That's insane! You explained the baked lighting super well.
Are you going to cover how they animated the characters next? I saw you explained how the model deformed incorrectly but I am very much interested in how you could animate such a low poly model properly.

[boscorner]

Im buyin that plugin at the end
Affine texture mapping is what makes ps1 look ps1, imo.