🧵 How the hell do you make Silicon Graphics-esque renders?
Anonymous at Fri, 9 Aug 2024 01:11:27 UTC No. 991879
I've been wondering this for a long time now. I know it involves NURBS modeling, image textures, and basic diffuse + gloss shaders, but that's about all. Is there anything I'm missing?
Anonymous at Fri, 9 Aug 2024 02:02:24 UTC No. 991880
>>991879
Heavy use of procedural computation textures/materials, think perlin noise, fractals, falloff, gradients that sort of thing. Reflection maps equirectangular panorama mapped to spherical coordinates, use of legacy color grading, glow/bloom, DOF post-effect systems etc.
Anonymous at Fri, 9 Aug 2024 02:25:17 UTC No. 991882
>>991880
>Reflection maps equirectangular panorama mapped to spherical coordinates
Sorry, I'm a retard when it comes to math. Could you explain this a little?
Anonymous at Fri, 9 Aug 2024 03:06:12 UTC No. 991887
>>991882
A 2D texture map laid out with polar coordinates so it maps onto a sphere. You set the UV's of your material to use spherical coordinates and apply the material to any shape and it will look like it reflects what is in your texture map. Like metal cap Mario from SM64.
That render you have there uses a raytrace renderer tho as evident of Wario being reflected in the train and crisp sharp shadows. Probably also running 'radiosity'.
Legacy GI/raytracer that have the bounces bleed sampled color around the radius of each sample possibly contributing to that retro look.
Also experiment rendering with some more costly classic AA enhancement filters like Blackman or Catmull-Rom and use a quality supersampler like Hammersley.
Quality renderings that went into magazines and stuff as promo art prob had the artist dial in those filters to nail the presentation.
Anonymous at Fri, 9 Aug 2024 07:24:58 UTC No. 991893
>>991879
i think i've seen so much retro 3d i can somehow tell the difference if it's an SGI/Alias bucket-based render when it is not as clean/clear as a Kinetix/Max scanline based render.
Anonymous at Sat, 10 Aug 2024 18:12:22 UTC No. 991970
>>991879
Download old software and read old docs
Anonymous at Sat, 10 Aug 2024 23:23:15 UTC No. 991978
>This thread again
Anonymous at Sun, 11 Aug 2024 00:57:24 UTC No. 991985
I dont get what the mystery is. It's flat colors with specularity. Everyone asks how to do this and what blows me away is how hard it is to make your render NOT look like this.
Anonymous at Sun, 11 Aug 2024 04:22:52 UTC No. 992003
>>991985
Retards think there's something inherent about it that creates "soul". As if trying to replicate the techniques will suddenly make them better at art.
What they don't realize, is that the people doing this shit back in the day were experts in the fields and masters of their craft.
Anonymous at Sun, 11 Aug 2024 15:43:30 UTC No. 992018
>>992003
I don't get this opinion. I've never seen anyone anywhere else on the internet have this particular opinion except here, and I don't know what made you come to that conclusion. It reminds me about how a few years ago, some of the posters here treated stylized sculpting the same way, like it was some sort of boogeyman, but eventually they all dropped the problem and no one talks about it anymore. I guess you guys just wanted to find a new thing to hate on.
Personally, I think oldschool 3dcg looks neat, and there isn't much else to it.
Anonymous at Sun, 11 Aug 2024 18:20:40 UTC No. 992031
>>992018
>But eventually they all dropped the problem and no one talks about it anymore.
In my case it's in part because I'm not a hater, I've already said my piece about it, no need to keep harping on it indef.
Ultimately People are allowed to like something I dislike.
But it's also the case this fad is kind of over, people who want to do this style of rendering now have lot of information about how to go about it.
They're no longer doing meme things en-masse like installing old versions of 3D software or buying >>991967 thinking that art will makes itself
look that way as long as you use the correct tools of the era.
Most retroguys now understand how it took more skill to make that with legacy tools than to reproduce the look with up to date ones.
It's no longer so much of a fallback position for people who can't do art who pretend these more naive artforms have 'soul'.
As long as people are honest about what they're doing I don't have a problem with them.
The pretentious part shitting on art they can't do themselves while elevating what seems attainable to them was where they got most pushback/hate.
Anonymous at Wed, 14 Aug 2024 20:43:03 UTC No. 992149
>>992018
What it is, is that the real charm of these old renderings comes from the designs and not from the materials they use. There are too many young artists who are looking for that magic setting to turn on that will instantly give their model's soul, and there isn't one. You tell them that and they call you a troll.
The reason you only find this opinion on 4chan is because everywhere else is an over moderated shithole where non-affirmative comments get you banned.
Anonymous at Thu, 15 Aug 2024 08:29:31 UTC No. 992182
>>991880
>>991887
>I have no idea what all of these words mean - the post
Stop trying to sound smart. Hammersley is not a supersampler. Procedural textures (textures as a whole even) were almost noexistent back then. "Reflection maps equirectangular panorama mapped to spherical coordinates" is the dedault for HDRIs and every 3D software does it out of the box with no setup.
Anonymous at Thu, 15 Aug 2024 09:12:52 UTC No. 992183
>>992182
> Procedural textures (textures as a whole even) were almost noexistent back then.
What years are you talking about? Also, aren't procedural textures were used from the very beginning of computer graphics?
There are some links to old texture packs in other threads, I got just one and one of the packs there is early 90s procedural texture pack.
Anonymous at Thu, 15 Aug 2024 09:22:47 UTC No. 992184
>>992182
>Hammersley is not a supersampler.
But it is, it's still a part of max too, pic related.
>Procedural textures (textures as a whole even) were almost noexistent back then
Procedural textures are as old as UV coordinates in computer graphics bro, what are you even talking about.
>is the dedault for HDRIs and every 3D software does it out of the box with no setup.
'Every' doesn't include mine, I have to set what UV's to use manually in the material editor.
Anonymous at Thu, 15 Aug 2024 09:36:19 UTC No. 992186
>>992183
Textures were used EXTREMELY sparingly back then, hence almost noexistent. Look at OP's picture, all of the materials combined in that scene use a total of 9 image files, as opposed to even mid 2000s games where 2-3 objects would have demanded that texture budget.
>>992184
Hammersley is not a supersampler, it's the sampling algorithm used by it, basically just 2D Halton.
Nonexistent as in see above. Nearly all materials used flat colors and values, you used textures when you had no other choice and even then you thought twice about it.
Anonymous at Thu, 15 Aug 2024 09:51:20 UTC No. 992187
>>992186
> Textures were used EXTREMELY sparingly back then, hence almost noexistent.
That's just a very particular style. Play wolfenstein, doom, etc.
Anonymous at Thu, 15 Aug 2024 10:02:40 UTC No. 992188
Doom 2 (1994) has 198 wall textures and 37 floor/ceiling textures.
Anonymous at Thu, 15 Aug 2024 10:08:28 UTC No. 992189
>>992186
> Nearly all materials used flat colors and values, you used textures when you had no other choice and even then you thought twice about it.
I think that is just a specific style of some static renders. Because static renders could use advanced raytracing renderer algorithms, people used them with flat materials to exacerbate lighting/shading.
In actual games much cheaper realtime renderers are used and textures are usually applied everywhere, on every surface, unless a game chases a specific flat style.
Anonymous at Thu, 15 Aug 2024 10:35:22 UTC No. 992191
In original Spyro even though it's kinda flat-looking, there's not a single surface without a texture in actual game. But if you look at CD covers, those are raytraced static renders and those probably use flat materials a lot.
Anonymous at Thu, 15 Aug 2024 23:49:08 UTC No. 992235
the question is not about old real time graphics in the games but in the marketing renders like in the OP.
Anonymous at Fri, 16 Aug 2024 07:41:25 UTC No. 992245
>>992235
Okay, but saying they don't use textures because of "low texture budget" doesn't make sense. That's clearly a deliberate style choice.
Anonymous at Tue, 20 Aug 2024 20:25:36 UTC No. 992496
>>992245
They don't use textures because there aren't uv maps for that type of geometry
Anonymous at Wed, 21 Aug 2024 16:09:35 UTC No. 992575
>>991879
just keep in mind these images had a lot of post work done. clone brushing to break up sharp edges on the brick wall. the motion blur and lens blur effects are somewhat sloppy and definitely done in post. There's a lot more in common with arch-viz workflows with cinematic or game workflows.
If I wanted this look I'd first hand author some BRDF textures to approximate the simplified light/shading.
I'd render out all the relevant channels (shadow, albedo, reflections, normals) and do a lot with the final composite in photoshop.
I wouldn't be afraid to render elements out separate and Frankenstein them together later.