How to make PS1-Esque graphics with Blender 2.9 (Vertex Coloring)

With the models that we make, at some point or another we have to decide how they are going to look. We have to decide how they are going to be colored, and one of the simplest ways to do it, in terms of computation and hardware, is Vertex Colors. Im going to cover some basics on how to use vertex paint, and some tricks you might not find on your own ;)
Hope you liked the video,
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Here's the game that was shown off near the end:
gamejolt.com/games/ZeraMA/238357
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[@lambda113]

could u maybe cover on da next vidoe like with the table scene how to texture using texture paint on blender, or using online textures and making them look low poly. im working on creating a custom bunny pokemon looking thing so will b helperful as paint is not the best lol

[@TheSicklyWizard]

I think my plan for the next videos is going to be vertex colors: pt 2, Texture atlasing, then texture painting. Then from there ill do one on projection texturing and baking. Then once texturing is done we'll do character design/modeling, interior/architecture modeling, animation, particles and Sfx, and finally rendering and exporting

[@lambda113]

@@TheSicklyWizard nice one bru cant wait

[@GrandeGio95]

@@TheSicklyWizardwhere is the part 2

[@connorshanks9931]

it never came...@@GrandeGio95

[@DapperSFM]

Note for people on blender 3.x, vector color was changed to color attribute in the shading tab

[@xjuicysocksx]

you saved my life.

[@thebirbgaming]

thanks

[@uhmm3996]

thanks man !!

[@bd_bandkanon]

thank you for making a PSX-style game that isn't a freakin' horror game. Like, I understand, it's great that they exist, but this is such a breath of fresh air. Thank you. Seriously.

[@denizdemir9255]

lol right? it's what everybody makes when they make a ps1 style game these days

[@jlewwis1995]

@@denizdemir9255 well I'm planning for making a ps1 style fps game in the 90s rare style (think goldeneye, perfect dark, timesplitters etc)

[@axemyt8539]

​@@jlewwis1995 lol i'm also trying to make a ps1 styled fps game. specifically i'm trying to make something in the style of disruptor

[@silentslayergaming8469]

Im trying to make something fantasy related :) but I suck at unity and I dont know where to even begin lol

[@silentslayergaming8469]

I also suck at blender

[@TomSomniac]

Love the Spyro music in the background

[@crazyghost6914]

Such great information! We need part 2!

[@sfsfewaerq]

I've been looking for a tutorial like this for AGES. Thank you!

[@filipemecenas]

Tons of precious info , thanks slickywizard

[@kyleboynton2748]

Your production value is top notch my man!

[@jackhillery4453]

Never stop making these videos, they are amazing!

[@skarpantre]

This tutorial was excellent! I was amazed by how well you put everything together and explained everything :D

[@protophase]

On the topic of when to use vertex colours, I saw a video a while back from a dude who was inspecting the scenes of some games on the Nintendo DS. They used vertex colours on the environment like on the ground and such to fake the lighting and mood, it made a tremendous difference with and without.

[@JulianGallese]

Love your tutorials man, thank you!

[@Mad_Luv85]

wow this channel is amazing at explaining things

[@joshuastelly4256]

This is an amazing level of depth and quality.

[@sheikhskype]

Thank you for making this, fire

Thank you very much for these tutorials! I'm a beginner learning to model things in Blender and one of my all-time inspirations is Spyro 3. I know that "the fundamentals of a craft are universal", but your videos are focused on the style that I am trying to emulate, and because of that I appreciate them very much. I have also been watching some of your long streams and it's very enlightening to see your whole process. You are a very talented teacher and your visual explanations are getting better and better. I wish you the best! Cheers from Brazil :)

[@stefanguiton]

Excellent Video

[@Icie145]

8:41 the realization lmao, but awesome video and i watch the whole thing to learn this :)

[@Jroobelucios]

I love Zera it was a nice surprise to see it haha

[@carlossegura403]

I am only a software engineer, but I love your content and N64, PS1 graphics 👾

[@lucas_roedel]

Your channel is an absolute goldmine! There is a ton of neatly organized information in each video (I just found out about the color palette menu and my life has changed) and they are all really fun to watch I just dream about the day when there'll be a way to simulate the vertex position rounding (jittering effect) of the ps1 inside of blender cheers!

[@TheSicklyWizard]

For vertex jitter, you can kinda fake it. Its really finicky but i did it in my Heavy Distance prismatic castle vid

[@suzukito]

love ur videos

[@dubbynelson]

Spot. On. You win!

[@TheSicklyWizard]

What i win? 🤔

[@truesosense7722]

Good video ! For people that cannot find the "Vertex color" node, it has a different name now, it's "Color attribute" now.

[@LarsHost]

OH GOD!.. Finally a new video! Upd: You’re growing, man. Love these illustrations

[@TheSicklyWizard]

Thanks i do too :)

[@tingel155]

this is so well done! you are really improving in editing your videos!

[@TheSicklyWizard]

I was originally using sony vegas but swapped to blender because it worked way better for my needs :)

[@tingel155]

@@TheSicklyWizard nice!

[@terrawest9500]

You have such a good voice

[@MangoDev_]

I found an easy way to make realistic PS1 textures. First, find some images. Second, screenshot/copy & paste them into GIMP. Third, touch them up and make sure they look correct. Finally, index the image colors to 256 and boom, you got a realistic PS1 style texture.

[@justDerekk]

And me wasting my time with flat textures, excellent video.

[@GhettoWxzrd]

1:38 this was iconic and hilarious at the same time lol.

[@grunnindieps1-stylesurviva200]

Hey! Really love this tutorial! I'm looking to also merge textures with vertex colors. You mentioned there is a video part 2 where you show us exactly that. Which video might that be? Thank you for all the great stuff you upload :) Really fun to watch and helpful!

[@TheSicklyWizard]

I think I went over meeting them in the Environment and Trim sheets tutorial? Check there.

[@grunnindieps1-stylesurviva200]

@@TheSicklyWizard thanks a lot, found it! Also really useful to learn about trim sheets. It's been a pay texturing my park area 😂

[@uwaiswaiswais]

YES TEXTURING SECRETS!

[@MorrysIllusion]

hey, your videos have been a great watch for what im making and i really enjoy them! though at the end of this video you mention youd make another video about vertex painting. have you made that video yet? i didnt exactly see anotehr video titled vertex paint part 2, and id love to learn more about it through your videos!

[@TheSicklyWizard]

It kinda got absorbed into my Environment texturing video, im bad at organizing my videos. But thats whete its continued

[@MorrysIllusion]

@@TheSicklyWizard alright, thanks! ill definitely be watching a lot more of them so ill be sure to check that one out

[@Jomoko89]

You should also tell your viewers about vertex shadow baking, its one of the main effects used in ps1 games to give the illusion of real lighting. among other things.

[@TheSicklyWizard]

I do eventually want to show that off, im slow at videos unfortunately XD

[@Jomoko89]

@@TheSicklyWizard I decided to try to get it working on my own and I've had success, but you have to go through a specific workflow in blender and unity to acheive it, even had to install an addon to get it to work. reach out to me if you need any help.

[@SageX85]

Curious that you said Vagrant Story, since the lighting is done with vertex colors in that game

[@crazyghost6914]

how would u do a texture paint on top of the vertex color painting?

[@bryanlorenzo79]

Great tutorial. I would like to see y do effects like smoke or light that comes out from the ground from player when summoning in ff7.

[@TheSicklyWizard]

I do intend to :)

[@TheRealArtDoctor]

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhh, I did not know vertex color existed

[@GarudaPSN]

Vagrant story utilizes vertex painting to simulate it's lighting conditions alongside the textures. It's not just textures

[@TheSicklyWizard]

Thats what i figured, yeah

[@JosephKuligowski]

so for 12:30 in the data transfer modifier it doesn't give the option to pick base color in layer selection or layer mapping

[@gm3153]

cool video bro! Am currently trying to decide how to colour my first character model so this has helped! Do you take video requests?:)

[@TheSicklyWizard]

Sure what would you like to see?

[@gm3153]

@@TheSicklyWizard thanks for replying:) I’m currently modelling a character in the ps1 style for the first time and am wondering how I should create the characters face. I saw somebody briefly show a method of getting a portrait photo of a model and cropping it in gimp and doing it that way and another were somebody paints it straight on the model in blender. Im abit confused so any help would be much appreciated! Thank you bro!:)

[@TheSicklyWizard]

@@gm3153 im going to get there eventually. What i would do for a character that is more "realistic" i would make a reference sheet of every aspect i want to use in my models texture. I make a second uv map and project it over that reference to make a projection texture, then with the original uv bake the projection texture into a 256x256 image.

[@TheSicklyWizard]

I did this in my recent steam where i made a skateboard

[@gm3153]

@@TheSicklyWizard ah sweet thank you! I will definitely check it out and apply that to my model! All the best bro🙏🏻

[@swampwaffle74]

Man you have improved with tutorials. Your competing with CG matter.

[@BrainSlugs83]

Pfft, cgmatter can't compete with this lowpoly goodness!

[@Kavukamari]

im a bit confused of why data transfer is necessary.. actually while i was typing this i think i understand why, it's so that when you apply the modifiers it ends up being one combined layer on the model itself rather than if you did it in the shader editor you would have to then bake it to the vertex colors before you could export the model

[@ruslopuslo]

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

[@superbn0va]

Now let’s make a cool Tomb Raider clone or even better a Nightmare Creatures clone!!

[@VikVaughnMISC]

This is going to be a bad question but when making models are we relying on the vertex lighting and colours to shade the model as opposed to selecting shade flat/shade smooth?

[@jobbydude]

blender best boy

[@PatinaGames]

I’m working on a geometry node setup that adds as close to a real lighting system as i could make where the end user does not have to touch geometry nodes at all, just apply and setup the modifier and apply the shader I hope to release it soon. Edit: with tools like box fill where you just grab rotate and scale a box into place and set a color, along with point and spot lights and whatever i’m still coming up with

[@PatinaGames]

I released my setup to the public

[@_peepee_]

“im gonna paint this castle with p’stel colors” lmaoo

[@longjohn7992]

AHHH I GOT THE PUN IN THE NAME *Lizard Wizard*

[@projectavalongame]

Hey, sorry to comment on a 2 year old video, but I noticed that you don't have lighting/shadows in your viewport in blender - In mine, it makes the objects look shiny, which obviously we don't want in a ps1 style game/model. How do you turn this off? I can turn it off in Godot so it looks fine there but then what I do in Blender looks different to what ends up in the game engine. Thanks, hopefully that made sense.

[@notcubicsound9738]

Just to say Vertex Node has been changed to Color Attribute for blender 3.6 and above

[@hydrocosmo]

Thank you, no idea why they changed that.

[@GrandeGio95]

where's the part 2 ?

[@Manu0jedi]

I'm using blender 3.3, for some reason it's not letting me select the layers inside the modifiers

[@TheSicklyWizard]

Hmmm, I'll have to look into that

[@alexwestphal9515]

does anybody know how to achieve a similar texture (animated/keyframed) as in 2:10? or of a tutorial explaining the process? looks so good

[@not_herobrine3752]

ok heres a short version plug a noise texture into a bump node then plug that into the normal then plug a uv map into the noise texture and then plug a vector math node inbetween the uv and the noise nodes animate the vector math node, play around with the connections

[@grunnindieps1-stylesurviva200]

Sorry I have another question.. How do I export these vertex colors as a material so I can use them in Unity? Hope you can help cause I'm stuck here haha. Thanks!

[@grunnindieps1-stylesurviva200]

And does that work with the Haunted PS1 pipeline? xD

[@TheSicklyWizard]

I assume it does. I don't work outside of blender.

[@santicheeks1106]

21:46 my post is the one thats says help

[@williammorrison1002]

Does anyone know what game is used for footage at 19:50?

[@TheSicklyWizard]

That is not a game :) thats an animation i made a while back called "Prismatic Castle"

[@amymorgan886]

examples like crash isnt really vertex coloring its flat shading.

[@ViviDotArchive]

Vertex colours doesn’t exist in the add menu at all. Where do you get it?

[@TheSicklyWizard]

I'll have to readdress vert colors, they changed things around for blender 3.2. It's now color attribute. And you add it to your model from the mesh data properties and you want it to be face corners not just vert colors.

[@DazzlingAction]

Can we do this in older versions of blender or only 2.9?

[@TheSicklyWizard]

Pretty sure yea

[@Kavukamari]

hey that's jank... why isnt there a "fillbucket" tool for vertex paint... they could even have a toggle for "connected only" and "visible only" etc

[@mr.m2675]

can you please add tags to your video? i was unable to find this when i was searching for: blender, vertex, alpha, colour, painting

[@TheSicklyWizard]

But... Those are in my tags... I think the youtube algorithm is doing me dirty :/

[@IkarosArtisan]

Where is vertex colours part 2?

[@TheSicklyWizard]

I never made a De Facto sequel to this video, but i expanded on vertex colors in these videos kzbin.info/www/bejne/hJTQgGmJrdKkZ5Y kzbin.info/www/bejne/m6qxcoyfi9NjpK8

[@JONATHANMAZZINI]

Ps1 support textures?

[@TheSicklyWizard]

Yes, it did indeed support textures

[@bigboomer1013]

Where part 2?

[@TheSicklyWizard]

I didnt end up doing a difinitive part 2, but i followed up in the ideas i had in the Trimsheet vid

[@glowiever]

where's part two?

[@TheSicklyWizard]

Its been on an unfortunate hiatus for a while. Im hoping to get a vid out before the end of the month but i feel i will restructure what i had planned a bit. Ill be dipping into texturing next vid instead.

[@glowiever]

@@TheSicklyWizard good luck. your content is of a much higher quality than most blender vids out there. really gives practical tips on how to use certain tools. entertaining too.

[@aitor.online]

couldnt you instead of duplicating the object to make seperate layers, instead use multiple vertex color "tabs" and then mix them in the shader editor?

[@aitor.online]

i tested it out and it totally works. just mix the vertex color tabs in the materials tab using the "mix rgb" node

[@TheSicklyWizard]

Yes you can. however, in unity, as far ad im aware, it only has one vertex color slot for rendering. atleast in my render pipeline. So i HAVE to mix them down on to one layer.

[@aitor.online]

@@TheSicklyWizard ah yes that makes sense. i think my idea would work better if you have to keep going back to tweak because you could just bake the material out as a texture without applying the effects destructively in blender

[@TheSicklyWizard]

Yea, its also fine for straight renders in blender

[@TheSicklyWizard]

@@aitor.online visually there is a difference between baking the vertex colors down into a texture or using them raw. for one, there is a visual difference, in that the larger the distance is from vertex to vertex, the grainier the texture will look due to the resolution of the baked texture. Secondly, id assume vertex colors are more efficient than image textures because the color value is assigned along edges of the mesh itself, which are relatively small in number given the style, where as an image texture, assuming a res of 256 was used, would consist of 65,636 colored pixels, many of the space of the image goes unused because the uv's might not need the whole image. So, i think its safe to use just vertex colors in the way that I did it :) unless someone has a far better method than mine, which there must undoubtedly be. not sure if you even need to apply the modifier like i did, either.

[@dsfsdfsdfsdf43]

cant find part 2

[@TheSicklyWizard]

Part 2 was sort of merged with the environment texturing tutorial

[@dsfsdfsdfsdf43]

@@TheSicklyWizard thank you

[@Fl0wy]

trans pride castle😳

[@anamore]

19:05 gay castle

[@rh162]

Hahah pee poop

[@TheSicklyWizard]

Yes