I just watched a handful of pretty bad "how to make PS1 style graphics" but this video is *fantastic* for its short runtime because it points directly to strong examples of real good-looking PS1 games as well as explaining how it works and briefly demoing how to get a similar look in modern tools. Thank you for making this!
I managed to achieve that vertex colour water caustic effect in unity about a year ago as an exercise. I used a scrolling noise texture to make the vertex colors flicker and move around. Looked pretty sick.
Bro I cannot repeat myself enough, these videos are gold bro! Entertaining info in a quick digestible form!?! ABOUT A COOL NICHE TOPIC!?!?! This dude definitely is heading in the right direction.
I never owned any PlayStation, I am a Nintendo kid and was totally into the N64. But I gotta say, over all those years and looking at many PS1 games, I think the graphics of that system have more "personality", they are more distinguishable from other 3D graphics. And being a 3D artist today myself, I really like the look of PS1 graphics, especially the unfiltered blocky textures. One day I will create my own PS1 environment. Sadly, being a 3D artist, it kills off all the mysteries about those old 3D consoles. How they could achieve their stuff. Today I understand it all.
I'm glad I saw this video because now it gave me something to think about of my game. While I try my best to make everything look pretty, i could use vertex coloring on top of my textures to make them look even better. Great idea. Thanks a lot. Now i just need to figure out how to get this done in Unity hahah
You can bake lighting to vertex colors in blender, though it can be a bit finicky especially if you're using a sky or HDR to add outdoor lighting, I get the distinct impression it wasn't really something cycles was intended to do 😂 But you can do it anyway and the results are pretty good especially if you're using a relatively high poly base mesh which for ps1 you would be doing to offset the affine warping
@@jlewwis1995 Sounds interesting! I'm still a complete noob to Blender and just doing basic stuff to texture my models with UV maps. Not using shaders. If I wanted to use vertex coloring ON TOP of my textures, how would you go about doing this and how would this be imported into Unity? Also need to bake the textures?
@@grunnindieps1-stylesurviva200 no you don't need to bake the textures, first you go into vertex paint mode and scrub around on the model a little bit to get blender to make a vertex color layer then you need to edit the vertex color attribute and change it's domain from "face corner" to "vertex", if you don't do that the lighting bake will be pretty bad. And you need to make sure it's type is set to "byte color" too (at least I think that's what it's called anyway), not float or integer or whatever. Then after doing that you need to set up your lights obviously. Then after you set up your lights you set the renderer to Cycles (if it isn't already) then in the "bake" menu you set the type to "vertex color" and just press bake and it *should* work correctly. There IS a little bit of a problem though, as far as I can tell cycles WILL actually try to bake the textures into the vertex color while mixing it with the lighting color which will obviously give the wrong results a lot of the time, the only way around this seems to either be either just swapping all your textures out for plain white materials when baking or using the light path node to force the camera ray to always return pure white on all your materials.
Such content is very cool and teaches all indie developers, fans of ps one graphics that you don’t need to mindlessly use mechanics of such a render and make mega pixel horrors, where you can’t see anything but pixels and vhs effects that make you sick, in original graphics people tried to make cool and it feels
when you think about it, alot of games selling points is getting immersed in another world. so what do you need? Atmosphere. General ambience in game feel, lighting, sound and "belivableness" play a huge role in a games quality.
Exploring lightning tricks from back then is still super useful nowadays!! (For example when you want to optimize a game) Like another example of using vertex colors is NFS MW, hear me out, I know it’s a newer game, but they still use vertex colors to fake ambient occlusion on cars, and it really works!! (I just noticed this the other day, but it’s super useful to save memory!)
@@Marcis. Yes, that one!! Sorry for the lack of precision, I don’t really consider the 2012 version the Most Wanted XD. It’s also definitely one of my favorites, because I also love the first Underground, it’s hard to decide between both hahah
The trick is Vertex colors right?(you mention it at 1:07). I see so many low-fi first person projects (like ps1-ps2 style graphics) and they look so great! (kind of "realistic Quake graphics") ..and Im trying to figure out how they do it. Im sure if I try to put simple textures and baked lighting the result wont be that great. In your video I hear for the first time about "vertex colors" ..and I think that is the trick/the important thing I mean, to make them look good.
2:37 have you migrated your game to UE5 or is this just an example for the video? Asking because I'd like to hear your thoughts if you migrated or for a PSX should I just stick to 4.27? (but then losing UE5 QoL improvements regarding the workflow, IK Rigs, etc).
I still use 4.26 for my main project because the latest updates break my game and there isn't a must have feature for me at least in UE5 so it's not worth the headache.
Hey great video as always :) Was curious if you had insight as to how they did texture details like in the zombie textures of Resident Evil 2/3. They have an insane amount of details within such a small canvas. I don't know if they're just very talented artists and they drew directly to that canvs size (256x256 or even smaller sometimes 128x128), or they drew at a much higher res and then downscaled? Would be a great idea for a video imo ;)
I love the look of Alien Resurrection but i dont know much about graphics/lighting etc. Where should i look into if want to learn to achieve that look? (vertex color and such)
"...squash the notion that if you are making a retro styled game, it has to look like shit." This!!! so many games use "retro" to justify being ugly messes.
Thank you for mentioning this. I'm always offput by all those modern games with "retro style" that just make shitty graphics because "old game look bad" both in 3d and pixelart. It's lazy and just a bad excuse in my eyes.
Sorry for the noob question, but when you refer to "vertex lighting" it looks like you are simply talking about painting part of your textures lighter or darker in order to give the appearance of light and shadow... is that correct? Other than layered material painting on landscapes, I don't have much experience with vertex painting (unless weight painting counts?). Is there any special technique to this, or do you just .go to mesh paint mode, and then start coloring in areas? I noticed you're paint color is set to white, so I'm assuming their is either some sort of masking or layer property set up so that the white is actually darkening the existing material. Any additional insight would be appreciated. Thanks for all the videos!
@@Marcis. I use construct 3 and I guess. Im just used to not having code. I could attempt to learn but I want to just make a simple game and it feels like to much to learn for something simple
Vagrant story faked it with a separate model draw. It would be drawn behind and slightly to the side of the original model and with brighter vertex colors.
I just watched a handful of pretty bad "how to make PS1 style graphics" but this video is *fantastic* for its short runtime because it points directly to strong examples of real good-looking PS1 games as well as explaining how it works and briefly demoing how to get a similar look in modern tools. Thank you for making this!
I am loving this series of quick condensed content.
Thanks again
Glad to hear it!
I managed to achieve that vertex colour water caustic effect in unity about a year ago as an exercise. I used a scrolling noise texture to make the vertex colors flicker and move around. Looked pretty sick.
Bro I cannot repeat myself enough, these videos are gold bro! Entertaining info in a quick digestible form!?! ABOUT A COOL NICHE TOPIC!?!?! This dude definitely is heading in the right direction.
Thanks! That's awesome to hear!
Love your commitment to strong aesthetics! Each video of yours ive watched has so much good advice. Excited to see more
I never owned any PlayStation, I am a Nintendo kid and was totally into the N64.
But I gotta say, over all those years and looking at many PS1 games, I think the graphics of that system have more "personality", they are more distinguishable from other 3D graphics. And being a 3D artist today myself, I really like the look of PS1 graphics, especially the unfiltered blocky textures. One day I will create my own PS1 environment.
Sadly, being a 3D artist, it kills off all the mysteries about those old 3D consoles. How they could achieve their stuff. Today I understand it all.
I'm glad I saw this video because now it gave me something to think about of my game. While I try my best to make everything look pretty, i could use vertex coloring on top of my textures to make them look even better. Great idea. Thanks a lot. Now i just need to figure out how to get this done in Unity hahah
Nice! I'm glad it helped you!
You can bake lighting to vertex colors in blender, though it can be a bit finicky especially if you're using a sky or HDR to add outdoor lighting, I get the distinct impression it wasn't really something cycles was intended to do 😂 But you can do it anyway and the results are pretty good especially if you're using a relatively high poly base mesh which for ps1 you would be doing to offset the affine warping
@@jlewwis1995 Sounds interesting! I'm still a complete noob to Blender and just doing basic stuff to texture my models with UV maps. Not using shaders. If I wanted to use vertex coloring ON TOP of my textures, how would you go about doing this and how would this be imported into Unity? Also need to bake the textures?
@@grunnindieps1-stylesurviva200 no you don't need to bake the textures, first you go into vertex paint mode and scrub around on the model a little bit to get blender to make a vertex color layer then you need to edit the vertex color attribute and change it's domain from "face corner" to "vertex", if you don't do that the lighting bake will be pretty bad. And you need to make sure it's type is set to "byte color" too (at least I think that's what it's called anyway), not float or integer or whatever. Then after doing that you need to set up your lights obviously. Then after you set up your lights you set the renderer to Cycles (if it isn't already) then in the "bake" menu you set the type to "vertex color" and just press bake and it *should* work correctly. There IS a little bit of a problem though, as far as I can tell cycles WILL actually try to bake the textures into the vertex color while mixing it with the lighting color which will obviously give the wrong results a lot of the time, the only way around this seems to either be either just swapping all your textures out for plain white materials when baking or using the light path node to force the camera ray to always return pure white on all your materials.
Very good video. Saved to come back to have a look at the games. I like short vids with dense Info. Thanks!
Such content is very cool and teaches all indie developers, fans of ps one graphics that you don’t need to mindlessly use mechanics of such a render and make mega pixel horrors, where you can’t see anything but pixels and vhs effects that make you sick, in original graphics people tried to make cool and it feels
what did you use to achieve that vertex-color-only look, e.g. at 1:15? excellent video btw!
I'd be curious how you've achived the dynamic vertex lighting effect.
lighting and sound is 70% of a game!
I don't know, I don't know... sounds like a lot!
@@Marcis. well, i guess it depends on the game😂
Yeah lighting is really important for a 3d scene, even the most well designed maps will look like crap if they're just fullbright
when you think about it, alot of games selling points is getting immersed in another world. so what do you need? Atmosphere. General ambience in game feel, lighting, sound and "belivableness" play a huge role in a games quality.
Vagrant Story and Alien Resurrections take two top spots in my personal best old school graphics tier list.
Which other games are in your list?
2:29 FINALLY, somebody speaks the gospel truth! Preach brother!
i almost missed this lesson 😭😭😭 thank you again
Exploring lightning tricks from back then is still super useful nowadays!! (For example when you want to optimize a game)
Like another example of using vertex colors is NFS MW, hear me out, I know it’s a newer game, but they still use vertex colors to fake ambient occlusion on cars, and it really works!! (I just noticed this the other day, but it’s super useful to save memory!)
Are you talking about the 2005 version? That's my favorite NFS game!
@@Marcis. Yes, that one!! Sorry for the lack of precision, I don’t really consider the 2012 version the Most Wanted XD.
It’s also definitely one of my favorites, because I also love the first Underground, it’s hard to decide between both hahah
Oh, yeah! The first Underground and MW are the best!
@@Marcis. You know it!!
The trick is Vertex colors right?(you mention it at 1:07). I see so many low-fi first person projects (like ps1-ps2 style graphics) and they look so great! (kind of "realistic Quake graphics") ..and Im trying to figure out how they do it. Im sure if I try to put simple textures and baked lighting the result wont be that great. In your video I hear for the first time about "vertex colors" ..and I think that is the trick/the important thing I mean, to make them look good.
That's right. Use vertex colors to give your scene some dynamic range and variety.
Alien Resurrection and Vagrant Story are both great examples. I would also include Xenogears.
interesting video, will try the game i'm developing atm, thanks
Oh man, could you make videos going in to more depth into how to do the things mentioned in this video?
2:37 have you migrated your game to UE5 or is this just an example for the video? Asking because I'd like to hear your thoughts if you migrated or for a PSX should I just stick to 4.27? (but then losing UE5 QoL improvements regarding the workflow, IK Rigs, etc).
I still use 4.26 for my main project because the latest updates break my game and there isn't a must have feature for me at least in UE5 so it's not worth the headache.
@@Marcis. Cool, thanks for answering.
Hey great video as always :)
Was curious if you had insight as to how they did texture details like in the zombie textures of Resident Evil 2/3. They have an insane amount of details within such a small canvas. I don't know if they're just very talented artists and they drew directly to that canvs size (256x256 or even smaller sometimes 128x128), or they drew at a much higher res and then downscaled?
Would be a great idea for a video imo ;)
Thanks!
I'm guessing they're downscaled. Maybe there is a developer commentary video floating somewhere on the internet.
they either downscaled or had the exact canvas size in mind to maximize details that would be otherwise lost when downscaling
i always wondered how they did dynamic lighting back then when it's so hard to do in hammer and other engines.
I love the look of Alien Resurrection but i dont know much about graphics/lighting etc. Where should i look into if want to learn to achieve that look? (vertex color and such)
how do you run ps1 game in wireframe mode is it an option in an emulator? (i think it was with the snowracer game)
Have you ever considered making a full fledged course on making PS1 style games in Unreal?
useful contente yes, thanks
my english failed hard in this previous comment, oh well lmao
"...squash the notion that if you are making a retro styled game, it has to look like shit." This!!! so many games use "retro" to justify being ugly messes.
Thank you for mentioning this. I'm always offput by all those modern games with "retro style" that just make shitty graphics because "old game look bad" both in 3d and pixelart. It's lazy and just a bad excuse in my eyes.
How did you deactivate textures on PS1 games? Is there an emulator with such feature?
epsxe with gpubladesoft plugin
Sorry for the noob question, but when you refer to "vertex lighting" it looks like you are simply talking about painting part of your textures lighter or darker in order to give the appearance of light and shadow... is that correct? Other than layered material painting on landscapes, I don't have much experience with vertex painting (unless weight painting counts?). Is there any special technique to this, or do you just .go to mesh paint mode, and then start coloring in areas? I noticed you're paint color is set to white, so I'm assuming their is either some sort of masking or layer property set up so that the white is actually darkening the existing material. Any additional insight would be appreciated. Thanks for all the videos!
what did you use to view ps1 games in vertex color mode?
epsxe with gpubladesoft plugin
What were the two games at 0:11 - 0:20?
Quake 2 and the second clip isn't a game. It's a demo level of my retro graphics asset pack for Unreal Engine.
@@Marcis. Thank you!
I wish there was a no code 3d game engine :( I tried game guru but still in beta and not good for low poly
Why do you want a no code engine?
@@Marcis. I use construct 3 and I guess. Im just used to not having code. I could attempt to learn but I want to just make a simple game and it feels like to much to learn for something simple
Godot has an addon for nocoding. I think it was called "orchestrator".
At the end in UE5, are you using built in mesh painting tools or that part of your PSX Effects addon?
I'm using the built in tools with the Retro Graphics asset pack
@@Marcis. ah gotcha - I should probably read the documentation 😂 I’ve only had a 5 min play around after purchasing
Can I know what is the name of the game at 0:11 ?
Quake 2
@@Marcis. Thanks..Also what emulator do you use for playing and studying ps1 games?
Avocado and epsxe
@@Marcis. Thanks 😁
How did vagrant story accomplish that rim lighting on the original hardware? Got any tips on how to accomplish this with your retro pack for unreal?
Vagrant story faked it with a separate model draw. It would be drawn behind and slightly to the side of the original model and with brighter vertex colors.
I was thinking the same thing, another model.
GDC talk 😭🐢
What is the name of the first song?
I make my own music and most of the songs are unreleased.
Comment for the algorithm
Holy crap seizure warning lol
new suscriber if you show more about optimisation to mobile games please!!!!!!!! and, God Bless you. thank you for not say bad words.