🧵 PS2-Era Graphics
Anonymous at Fri, 13 Sep 2024 13:47:07 UTC No. 995160
Im working on developing some games in my spare time and I’d really like to target the fidelity of ps2-ps3 style games, mostly for stylistic purposes (but also because I’m solo and don’t have the time and resources to make too many high poly things)
Specifically, I’m really interested in how characters like pic related were modeled and textured to look semi-realistic and expressive (especially textures because I’m still terrible with them)
Feel free to post low-poly or just your favorite models/textures from the games of the good old era of games
Anonymous at Fri, 13 Sep 2024 14:16:12 UTC No. 995161
>>995160
Dual UV sets in conjunction with camera mapping.
Model your character, rig and unwrap your UV to a UV set 'UV1'. Now pose your character infront of a camera to an angle you wanna texture from.
Render out your character model with a camera mapped projection UV set UV2' and use as a template to paint ontop of in your paint editor of choice.
Assign the result as a texture for UV2 and bake the result down to UV1.
Now change the view to cover dead angles that are still untextured or areas that has too much stretch due to the projection
and keep render new templates and repeat. Bake and combine down to your UV1 texture til you've covered your entire model.
Advantage of texturing like this is that you get pixel perfect placement of all your details and the end result will look exactly as you painted it.
Anonymous at Sat, 14 Sep 2024 15:40:29 UTC No. 995252
>>995238
Magic
Wizard shit
Anonymous at Sat, 14 Sep 2024 16:51:12 UTC No. 995259
>>995238
I'm a work in progress lol. I'm getting better at texturing but I'm pretty slow at it and it never comes out exactly as I'd like
Also that's a sick model
Anonymous at Sat, 14 Sep 2024 23:30:26 UTC No. 995289
>>995160
Japanese fighting games from the PS2 era have beautiful character models. That is all.
Anonymous at Sun, 15 Sep 2024 16:22:02 UTC No. 995345
>>995160
So I was able to find the actual in-game model for this character. The model is pretty low poly but I'm having alittle trouble understanding it.
For example, how would they get the split that happens on the front of the shirt, about where the nipples should be? Everything else around it seems to be a loop cut, which makes sense but I dont understand how they would have done that without using like the knife tool. Is this all from edge modeling or am I just an idiot?
Anonymous at Sun, 15 Sep 2024 17:02:20 UTC No. 995350
>>995345
they didnt make it split. they combined a row of edges between nipples. it gives that part a slightly crisper crease and importsntly its also a clever way to lower your poly count.
Anonymous at Sun, 15 Sep 2024 17:07:26 UTC No. 995352
>>995345
>Is this all from edge modeling or am I just an idiot?
Geometry is just geometry, who knows how the modeller that built that one preferred to work but any and all methods that you can use to generate useful geometry is valid, you have a knife tool and it makes sense to use it; use it.
Anonymous at Sun, 15 Sep 2024 17:11:09 UTC No. 995354
>>995350
>>995352
Thank you! I appreciate the help. I'm trying to take modeling seriously so I probably get too into the weeds and worry about random stuff I shouldn't
Again, thanks! And sorry for the probably simple questions
Anonymous at Tue, 24 Sep 2024 07:53:38 UTC No. 996274
>>995354
>apologizing to chuds on 4chan instead of leaving the thread forever
You are too white for this board
Anonymous at Tue, 24 Sep 2024 17:20:13 UTC No. 996322
>>996274
Change towards increased compassion gotta start somewhere, and those posts weren't delivered in any chuddy tone, they where helpful.
Why is it that being anon should require one to be a dick all the time?
Even if no one else know who the asshole behind some unnecessary angry post is the author know.
Embrace voluntary politeness and discover the inner love for your fellow tr/3/pot beings.
We can still grow the love within ourselves as tho selecting the scale-tool in our software of choice
press ctrl-i to invert select all our love instead of hatred and just crank that motherfucker skyhigh.
Anonymous at Sat, 28 Sep 2024 20:58:14 UTC No. 996779
I wanted to ask about something a bit more complex in regards to this. I've wanted to know how to do water/river/beachfront texture work using mainly diffuse and maybe some gloss? There are plenty of examples in the PS2 library, but it seems like every dev had a slightly different way of handling it. does anyone have a general workflow for this?
screenshot from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phl
Anonymous at Sat, 12 Oct 2024 03:20:54 UTC No. 998055
>>995160
>developing some games in my spare time
>(but also because I’m solo and don’t have the time and resources to make too many high poly things)
How feasible is this? make a 3d game with ps2 style graphics seems like a task too big for one guy.
Anonymous at Sat, 12 Oct 2024 10:47:12 UTC No. 998073
>>995160
I'm thinking sofimage xsi or the autodesk implementation of it have what you are looking for. Renders come out on the gray side, desaturated colors and such. Maybe use VMware to install W7 and either version of the program, when the trial ends you can alwaysnuke the vm and reinstall it or just clone a base vm with windows only before installingany trials.
Anonymous at Sat, 12 Oct 2024 12:48:06 UTC No. 998080
>>998055
It is *feasible*.
Although if you want it to not be half-assed nor released after the Heat Death of the universe, it would probably be better to find a code monkey while you focus on modelling.
PS2-style graphics are in high demand among amateurs, shouldn't be too hard to find one.
Anonymous at Sat, 12 Oct 2024 16:54:40 UTC No. 998093
>>998073
I actually recently started looking into that. I think I could do everything in modern software but I found out sofimage is how this exact model was made in the first place. Either way, it'll be interesting to see
Anonymous at Sat, 12 Oct 2024 16:58:11 UTC No. 998094
>>998055
OP here. I'm sure its highly improbable but not impossible. I'm not so delusional to think I can do everything in a reasonable time period. I'm also not looking this to be a career. Its more of a experiment for myself at the end of the day
>>998080
This is sort of what I was thinking as well. I can code but at this point the modeling (and drawing) is more fun for me so a code monkey is probably in the future if I really get serious about this stuff. We'll see
Anonymous at Sat, 12 Oct 2024 18:48:56 UTC No. 998098
>>998073
>>998093
Why use old software? It can't make that big of a difference, does it?
Anonymous at Sun, 13 Oct 2024 04:38:46 UTC No. 998143
>>998098
OP here. For me, mostly to just look into it. I figured, at least from an educational perspective, it would help see the limitations of the era first hand, as opposed to just hearing about it. And then in doing so, it'll help me to maybe find ways to optimize my own work in the more modern software.
Ultimately, I will just use blender/maya/zbrush anyway but I dont think it could hurt to spend alittle time in it.
So no, ultimately it wont make a big difference, but I just think it would be interesting.
Anonymous at Sun, 13 Oct 2024 20:24:18 UTC No. 998206
>>995238
What's the secret to actually learning shit like this? There's not that many resources on Youtube compared to pretty much everything else about 3D
Anonymous at Sun, 13 Oct 2024 20:45:44 UTC No. 998207
>>998206
Well first you draw how the character looks, shocking yes for many 3D artists but it’s easier to follow your character style than remembering.
Slowly build the character in the worst way possible because why not, the world isn’t going to peek. Fix the problems and you’ll be ready for rigging or material.
The material needs advanced design skills, this is unavoidable. Many would give up and stay a modeling career and help the technical team. Corporate will always judge your talent on how you drew your character UV so at least know a little.
Rigging is another place people would give up because of rules. It matters not what program or software you use, rigging a character takes skill to help the animation team. You kinda expected to learn python. When your done with rigging, animation should start.
Animation, production, promotion, etc. that’s outside of your question so I’ll leave it as that. The only thing you can do is learn at this point.
Anonymous at Mon, 14 Oct 2024 07:35:51 UTC No. 998263
>>998206
>>998207
Yeah anon likely meant how to texture it, not about the rigging and other technical stuff. I'm trying to texture low poly characters in substance painter aswell and they look like shit because I can't fucking get how they painted such realistic looks by hand onto a low poly mesh.
All tutorials are for high poly, AAA PBR stuff which honestly looks easier to do than low poly. The first has higher poly characters and more details for support.
Anonymous at Mon, 14 Oct 2024 09:58:37 UTC No. 998267
>>998263
Substance won’t help, it’s not a design program, no matter what Adobe keeps saying about it. You really do need to learn how to draw, UV professionally and learn lighting.
Anonymous at Mon, 14 Oct 2024 12:27:22 UTC No. 998280
>>996779
I made this a long time ago in Unity. Animated waves.
The sand is a tillable texture.
There's a darker sand layer meant to represent sand underwater too
The sea layer is an animated tillable texture and has an opacity texture near the shore so it's see through.
The waves are 2 planes that scale back and forth
Anonymous at Mon, 14 Oct 2024 23:14:56 UTC No. 998320
>>996779
That ocean effect seemed kinda mind boggling to me at first but I think it is just a pre-rendered animation. Then they used vertex colors to make it shift colors and go transparent at the beach. Then the beach foam is done like that anon said.
But anyways, I think this animated ocean texture is quite effective because it omits highlights and specular lighting.
Anonymous at Tue, 15 Oct 2024 05:42:03 UTC No. 998359
>>998143
But wasn't the look of the era a product of the limitations of the consoles and not the limitations of the tools the devs used?
Anonymous at Wed, 16 Oct 2024 05:58:42 UTC No. 998450
>>998280
>>998281
>>998282
Hey, Thanks for these! it helps to understand things a bit better. Though, I do feel it would be better to use a texture scroll effect with a sine or something instead of bones? that's the old-head in me talking though.
Anonymous at Wed, 16 Oct 2024 08:30:18 UTC No. 998586
Sounds like a cool project!
Anonymous at Fri, 18 Oct 2024 00:46:46 UTC No. 998920
>>998263
>>998851
There’s no secret sauce to it. You just gotta unwrap your UVs, paint them in photoshop, and use your editing skills to add dirt, grime, and other details from photo sources. The only people who still use this workflow are the mega autists who manually create HD texture mods for RE4 or a Zelda game by hand.
Anonymous at Fri, 18 Oct 2024 17:05:07 UTC No. 998971
>>998920
>paint directly on uv map in photoshop
never
Anonymous at Fri, 18 Oct 2024 18:11:24 UTC No. 998975
>>998971
Well that’s too god dang bad because Blender and Maya both lack the necessary tools for painting, no such plugin exists to directly paint it.
Anonymous at Fri, 18 Oct 2024 20:41:45 UTC No. 998994
>>998975
substance allows both on body and on uv map painting spöit by 2 screens
Anonymous at Sat, 19 Oct 2024 00:07:05 UTC No. 999011
>>998994
Substance cost $5000 a year and buying the Steam version is outdated with no other features. Only a matter of time until it’s useless to both Blender and Maya.
Anonymous at Sat, 19 Oct 2024 13:12:11 UTC No. 999069
>>995160
>(especially textures because I’m still terrible with them)
Unfortunately for you, this style is literally all about texture artistry. So you've either got to learn to paint, learn to photobash, or both.
>>999011
>buying
Rofl nobody pays for Substance.
Anonymous at Mon, 21 Oct 2024 02:54:51 UTC No. 999224
>>999069
Yeah I know. It forces me to get good at texturing or fail trying