How to Make 100% Accurate PS1 Graphics in Modern Software

[@joeroeinski1107]

I highly recommend everyone interested to read on the NO$PSX developer's write up on how the PS1 hardware works. He wrote a page which top-to-bottom describes all features of the PS1 hardware, including the MIPS CPU, GTE, fixed-point calculations, GPU, BIOS, color conversions, VRAM and so much more. It is an invaluable resource if you need total accuracy. He used his research to write the actual emulator, too.

[@youtubevarietyhour]

Hey! Do you have any links to this? Can't seem to find it.

[@msvmsvmsvmsv]

@@youtubevarietyhour problemkaputt.de/psx-spx.htm ... it's too overwhelming for me.

[@Graceksteam]

​@@youtubevarietyhourcheck problemkaputt . de /psxspx-contents

[@joeroeinski1107]

@@youtubevarietyhour It should be on the developer's website. I don't know if I can send links here, but search up the NO$PSX website and on the page, scroll to find the writing about the hardware.

[@mitsuhh]

Where's the link?

[@ShinGidora]

As another 3D dork, I've seen a ton of summaries of PSX graphics, but this was probably the best executions I've seen. You were able to nail the basics, cover all of the important tech limitations, showed simple yet powerful methods to achieve these effects in quick succession, and made an absolutely killer piece of art. + the vid production value just makes it that much sweeter. Fire tut

[@pwnisher]

Thanks for the kind words Shin! Derek absolutely killed it!

[@Marc_Fuchs_1985]

@@ShinGidora Totally agree, easily observable, how there is real passion in the video, leading to a high production value. When people don't care, how much money a video makes but want it to hit. And it does.

[@kaiwan]

Dude, thanks for the skillshare shoutout to my class. Means a lot coming from you

[@pwnisher]

Oh wassup man! Cool seeing you here!! Its my pleasure dude it looked sick!!

[@animatorFan74]

I love that to get the "dodgy" looks for older graphics, we have to employ add-ons and special techniques to get the same effect. Using advanced tech to get the dodgy look. Gotta love it :)

[@AlexandruLipan]

Its interestingly strange how to emoluate the lack of a floating point unit in the PS1 graphic system we need to employ fine tuned tech now

[@bigtyo14]

Now that if i think about it, back in the days some PS1 games are better looking than PS2 games. The creativity and technicality of the devs workaround the hardware limitations was absurd. Nowadays, the tech and hardware are more than enough, game devs more rely on the third party game engine, and only Game Engine devs dictate what's possible on the current hardware and what not, maybe that's why we saw less awesome technique like the PS1 era.

[@Syzygy_Bliss]

It’s kind like how South Park has a big animation pipeline to digitally replicate the look of the early stop-motion pilot.

[@Villager_U]

That room transition is so clean

[@pwnisher]

Hahaha thanks! We had a good time with that shot!

[@songguy001]

@@pwnisher how much time it took?

[@Indi_51]

i freaking love that this is on c4d, most of the tuts are blender only, thanks a bunch!

[@Marc_Fuchs_1985]

It's funny how I never had a PlayStation, not even a friend of me, and still this startup sound awakes a crazy retro feeling inside me. I guess I am an old man no matter what, having turned 39 yesterday........

[@MrJJandJim]

You're still young! And that PS1 startup just awakens the retro in all of us! I still have games for it, though I gotta get around to hooking up my PS2 up to my TV (no YRW connectors, I need a HDMI converter).

[@pwnisher]

Seriously that sound channels deeps!

[@Dreweybaby]

I’m 37 and had a PS1 as a kid! What a time to be alive man 🦾🦾🦾

[@Marc_Fuchs_1985]

@@Dreweybaby Oh yeah, I was at just the right age when the console came out, it's just that my family was poor and we only had several years old consoles. Gladly I had a buddy who was an only child and he had everything, including an N64, so we were Nintendo kids through and through. But today I feel a little sad, that Playstation in it's entirety passed by me.

[@Dreweybaby]

@@Marc_Fuchs_1985 I was poor too, my mom used a credit card to get it and it cost like $300 bucks back then if I’m not mistaken..but I was blessed to have friends that lived on my block and we all had either had a PS1 or a N64! So we was always at each other house .. I was in the 4th grade I believe when I got it.. good times

[@apathtrampledbydeer8446]

Beautiful! That is all I can say, and bonus points for having footage from Tenchu!

[@SONGODTV]

METAL GEAR SOLID (PS1) WAS LIFECHANGING!

[@thehammerofwrath]

the texture warbling, tho! *chef's kiss*

[@cosmicrdt]

Fixed point maths is a thing. The reason the textures warped was because of the limitations in affine mapping.

[@joeroeinski1107]

That's not an issue with it being fixed point. The DS uses fixed point but doesn't exhibit this issue. The real issue is the lack of depth, so there's no perspective division, so the texture is aligned to the edges of a 2D triangle.

[@Razumen]

@@joeroeinski1107 No, he's right, the issue was that the PS1 didn't have accurate enough floating point precision. It was literally a hardware limitation.

[@Merthalophor]

@@joeroeinski1107 the DS _did_ have those issues though.

[@ederbarrero5585]

​​@@RazumenI mean, true, the PS1 didn't have an FPU; however neither did the Nintendo DS but the DS does have perspective correct textures (unlike the PS1 which uses affine texture mapping for speed).

[@joeroeinski1107]

@@Razumen The use of affine texture mapping causing the warping is correct. But it is not due to fixed point calculations, just the lack of perspective division since no 3D information about depth/perspective is ever passed into the texture mapping unit on the PS1.

[@fgarciaish]

Incredible tut Derek! Totally geeking out now

[@Stratelier]

In addition to not having a z-buffer (depth information), the PSX also lacked true 3D (anisotropic) texturemapping, instead drawing textures via scalene (2D) transformations only. This created a slight but noticeable _texture_ "wobbling", particularly on geometry at acute angles to the camera, and is why large geometric surfaces were often either rendered with solid colors (non-textured) or subdivided into several smaller polygons.

[@BlanketBaron]

This is great! Concise and elegant techniques and the hardware limitations to boot! I feel like you can't recreate the psx distinct style without acknowledging the technological limitations of the time. That's actually my favorite part, I love the clever solutions that were applied to these obstacles. Thanks for sharing! shout out to vertex wobbling

[@litjellyfish]

One major factor that is omitted is the use of vertex color. Both static and dynamic lighting is code of it. And as important (maybe even more so) than the snapping.

[@Big.Joe.Grizzly]

You cant have ps1 style graphics without the warping textures, thats the biggest feature (EDIT) I know that they show the texture wobbling in the video I was just making a statement I'm sorry if my comment confused anyone! It's a great video honestly watch it all

[@HTMangaka]

Agreed, and it's the one thing that you can't replicate on modern hardware without writing your own API/Library like OpenGL or Vulkan. It turns out, the PS1 warping textures were just a matter of incomplete math equations, which don't exist anymore in modern systems. Pretty cool, really. =P

[@casscarpendale]

@@HTMangaka That's not true actually! You can replicate the texture warping very easily with a simple shader! And that can work on any modern hardware.

[@HTMangaka]

@@casscarpendale You're right! The formula is a simple 'Tu = u * Au + v * Bu + w * Cu;' So simple & elegant! =O

[@Torbernight]

@@HTMangaka not true tho, in openGL you just have to add the "noperspective" qualifier to the vertex outputs and fragment inputs to replicate it

[@litjellyfish]

@@HTMangakaits not incomplete. It’s just not as accurate. It’s a different approach that is less math heavy. That’s it. Same as that even in modern hardware sometimes things are not done in fully “exact” ways.

[@Hightreads]

it's somewhat annoying how so many people neglect to mention the art of vertex coloring. it's what gave games like Vagrant Story their amazing visuals, and was also used to color the enemies of games like FF7, or color entire characters like with Crash Bandicoot

[@tgirlshark]

the dithering shown at 4:00 isn't texture baked dithering, but the ps1's render pipeline dithering

[@nights312312]

Exactly, why does he write that this is 100% accurate when he doesnt even understand such basics about the PS1 hardware

[@Camtrack]

@@nights312312 haha this

[@mikiex]

@@nights312312 I don't think this is meant to be a deep dive on exactly how the PS1 worked for developers.

[@nights312312]

@@mikiex Why does it say "100% accurate" then? Because thats what the title says. But i see now that its a joke, hes being ironic. But also very misleading

[@Rafix]

EXCELLENT VIDEO, I LOVED IT!

[@Justin3DArt]

crash bandicoot and a case of mt dew was a typical friday night for me. Thank you so much for sharing your process and putting this video together.

[@pwnisher]

Yuuuup!!! The good ole days my friend =]

[@Makabert.Abylon]

Man every single frame of Wipeout2097 makes my synapses fire like crazy. Anyone else?

[@pwnisher]

One of my favorite series!!!

[@hurlicane56]

100% that game's aesthetics hit me right in the Y2K part of my brain.

[@aequanimus63247]

Man, so xmas 1998 my brother and I got an N64 with two controllers and the game we got with it was wipeout 64. We played that cart non stop. I got super nostalgic seeing anything wipeout related after such a long time.

[@SpoofyJ]

I'm so glad we've come back around to PS1 graphics aesthetics. So many Indie games are reaching for this look... and I support it! Awesome video.

[@danielrosner9751]

Excellent work, the only thing missing is the CRT filter that at the time served to soften the pixels and hide the low resolution a little.

[@AyushBakshi]

There's an old guy on yt who use to make these games. He beautifully explains all the limitations of such hardware at Machine code level. I forgot the channel name.. sorry

[@guns102]

If you remember, I'd like to know :)

[@virgilhawkins3390]

Same!

[@jwr6796]

Simondev?

[@AyushBakshi]

@@jwr6796 he is amazing too! But not him

[@AyushBakshi]

Found it: www.youtube.com/@CodingSecrets Bonus: www.youtube.com/@MattKC www.youtube.com/@Acerola_t

[@Xeranxies]

I'd also like to point out although the vertex snapping was a thing, back in the day it wasn't desirable and developers would try and do whatever they could to minimize or hide it. I know it's part of the nostalgia but when implementing it into a scene I'd personally try to dial it back a little bit.

[@litjellyfish]

Using image sequences was actually not used so much as it ate up a lot of texture memory. Instead particle systems, if animations or blending / animating two quads through each other was used.

[@sharpenednoodles]

Feel like you should've gotten a better effect with billboarded trees rather than the cross sectional models. Either way, looks fantastic

[@paulcantshutup]

The unsteadiness of the polygons, the chunky textures, the low bitrate for audio... all of these things evoke, for me, a period of time in my own past where things seemed so much better. Life was uncomplicated, direct, and for all its small dramas--homework, school, navigating adolescence into adulthood--it felt like things were saner, better. The only way I know to regain this feeling, even for a moment, is to throw myself completely into some creative endeavor or other, and ignore the rest of the world. We can't go back. But we can pretend, sometimes, and that is all it takes to put me back in that same mood.

[@augustopaixao8911]

I'm not gonna lie. I'll not pretend to watch this video in full, but it is so enterteinment that I had to watch it. Thanks man.

[@unamasa]

the vertex snapping maybe looks like wind effect on some scenes? its a great limitation if you see it that way, it really brings life to simple animations

[@tomellingsen]

It's fun to see this type of challenge. I feel like with UE5, the limitations aren't as creative as they were back in the day. Now it's all fancy scmanzy, but back in the day, they had to use so many weird techniques to trick the systems, and it really does show. Some of those games still look amazing, and it's all about art direction and creativity.

[@pwnisher]

100% Working with the tools you had! I think this can be applied to all areas of life and art! Music, sports, cooking, etc. Its really cool to see how the OG devs did it!

[@Vospi]

00:29 Kagero: Deception. Oh, I gotta play this one again. My Mister is ready.

[@yuler_]

8:20 Somewhat correct, somewhat incorrect. While not related to the snapping/jittering, yes the ps1 did not have floating-point representation BUT still had decimals in the form of fixed-point representation. The snapping/jittering comes the the rasterizer's lack of sub-pixel precision which makes vertices snap to the pixel grid 8:49 I think this is a misunderstanding of what the z-buffer is. Yes the ps1 did not have a z-buffer but this is related to drawing order, not vertex z values. Same as with typical rendering pipelines, vertex positions are still 3D until transformed to 2D

[@JimBuck]

This! I was going to post the same. I was a PS1 programmer in the mid-late 90s on 4 shipped titles, so I was confused by the analysis in the video. Fixed-point resolution at 12 bits (1/4096 resolution of a whole number), combined with snapping the resulting screen values to a 320x200 screen would definitely have this effect.

[@Crunchy_Punch]

I love that your first example of a classic PS1 game was Breath of Fire 3, an amazing RPG that doesn't get as much of a look in these days because it isn't the popular seventh installment of a certain RPG franchise.

[@3DRnD]

Thanks for sharing .. i like the sound effects references from MGS 1 .

[@arekp00]

You should use banner for the trees, it was common practice in ps1 games.

[@theblah12]

I would recommend using Index Color mode in Photoshop rather then saving as a GIF, since it will limit the amount of colors in a document to set a set palette which is how images were stored on the PS1, and will give you a lot more control over how the textures are dithered. The thing to remember with texturing on the PS1 (and PS2 to some extent) was that it was much closer to pixel art then modern texturing techniques - artists generally wouldn't just take a photo, crunch it down to 128px and call it a day, the textures would be edited on a pixel-by pixel basis - look at the texture work in Metal Gear Solid 1 & 2 and you can see that they're mostly pixel art drawn images similar to what would be done for artwork on the SNES and Genesis (In fact most of the artists would have had first-hand experience working with 16-bit consoles during that time period). Trim sheets were also used extensively (just as they still art today) to cut down on texture resources and textures for bespoke models were made in a extremely efficient manner to limit the amount of unused space. Basically, there's a lot more to it then what this video describes.

[@alyasVictorio]

5:25 Bro mentioned Metal Slug franchise. Let's Go!

[@Illusionaire1]

While the wobbling felt a little too much, everything else was perfect and throw me back to the good and old ps1 days. I'll be always be a pixel art guy myself, and sort of always resent a little how premature some of the early 3D games where and how much better they would had look if the folks stuck to pixel art and pre-rendered. But at the same time, as the PS1 reached more maturity, we did got some insanely good looking games. MGS! is beautiful to this day

[@voltcorp]

just as a tip, choosing PNG-8 on Save for Web and Devices also gives the same palette/dithering options as GIF.

[@sirpugstudios]

LESS GOOOO w editing

[@Sophistry0001]

yoooo that start up sound. brings me right back

[@pwnisher]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeahhh!!!!

[@dr.darkroom]

10:40 It just hit me - VIGILANTE 8 - this reminds me of that game so much.

[@BuzzaB77]

The lack of ability for floating point calculations was also a problem in the early days of digital audio, dithering is also still a thing in audio, and we still fight against aliasing everyday. interesting how many concepts and terminology are shared.

[@mikiex]

This is nostalgic for me as I worked on a couple of later PSX games, one huge resource we lacked back then was the sheer amount of reference images you can find online. Most of the textures were tiny hand drawn, even on the PS2 we often used 16 colour. The N64 was really bad because the textures were so tiny and the bi-linear filtering turned it into blurry a mess.

[@petacardi]

What? You are the guy from corridor digital, i remember you as a superhero puking milk. Nice to see you active! Edit: it was not corridor digital, it was the old freddie wong channel.

[@jag13153]

This is pure gold, You forgot the hash #inspiring

[@fundip533]

As someone who grew up with SNES and PS1, I cannot fathom how anyone can have nostalgia for wobbly vertices!

[@koomar341]

Such a sweet video, lads! Makes me nostalgic for the PS1....and Cinema 4d...which I haven't used in decades 😅😅 (or any 3d package :/)

[@danilakataev]

Amazing thinks 🔥🔥🔥

[@Y3DS]

Cooked like a true chef.

[@Pation655]

to recreate vertex snapping, a shader could be used? in the vertex shader you could simply round the positions to the nearest int, tenth, hundredth, ect depending on the allready existing scale of the game world.

[@egretfx]

great video!, as an indie game dev I wish C4D was a game engine, it has a very beautiful UI!

[@victorwidell9751]

Plenty of msdos games had vertex snapping. You could also try emulating the ps1 lack of texture perspective correction.

[@coratoraYT]

Fantastic walk through.

[@Marc_Fuchs_1985]

I have just submitted my Kinetic Rush render, which incorporates a few aspects of what is shown here. This render can be seen as a first proof of concept for my show, that I am about to launch (first creating some content, before pulling up social media channels). Initially, I wanted all of the background to resemble an original N64 look. But after working on the assets for a while, I realized, I don't want the look of the show get compromized so much by the console limitations, like I also want to use cool lighting. So i ditched the idea of an original console look, but what I kept from it is low resolution and limited color depth. So as it is supposed in that show, in my Kinetic Run render, the whole background is low resolution and very limited in color depth. In fact I did it just like shown here. I rendered all frames as high resolution PNG, put the sequence into Photoshop, resized it all to a frame width of 640 pixels and used the save for web functionality to save an animated GIF with only 64 colors and pattern dithering. In my show, it's intended to even be blockier than this with a background resolution of 320x180 pixels. The character though is a clean 4K render, because he's delivering most of what is relevant about the content. If you read all this and are curios, I have a few example renders of this whole thing on my channel. And of course, at some point hopefully within this year, the show will come. Watch out for the fox.

[@averagemug]

While this looks great, I think the main problem is that the Vertex Snapping doesn't look right. Obviously it's basically impossible to get it to look perfect without programming it completely by yourself, but it'd be better to just not have it at all. Vertex snapping is very specific in its movements, only snapping to vertexes relative to the movement of the object in the camera space. In this example, the objects move to randomb positions at random lengths and sizes instead of the uniformed chaos of real vertex snapping. Of course this isnt really dorected towards your vodeo at all, you did a great job replicating old graphocs in something that wasn't made for them, it's more of a random statement. It'd be really cool to see a modelling/ game development program specifically made with PS1 graphics in mind.

[@Morraak]

This is so cool, can we get an actual course covering this? Would be cool to make a game this way.

[@Baker6992000]

I waited all day yesterday

[@pwnisher]

Thanks for watching and supporting!

[@litjellyfish]

He also seems to mix sprites with billboard textures. In 3d you could not use sprites. What looked liked sprites was just a triangle quad polygon that was kept aligned with the camera

[@dlivrobeauchampii50]

This is so cool 🔥🔥🔥

[@thecasualreviewer2148]

Been look'n for this for awhile

[@petebyrne4773]

OMG, just seeing a glimpse of Silent Bomber made me so happy!

[@Notsram77]

Let's Freaking Go... ...back to texture warping and the warm glow of those pixels!

[@allenzhu3478]

0:47 that's a solid transition

[@jpiersma]

Haven’t even watched the video yet, and this is sick.

[@describethefauna]

autumnal grassessss 🌾

[@hadjstudio]

I recommend Drips PSX EFX for blender. probably the best kit out there

[@nerkTV]

been waiting for this

[@M7MMAD_1]

so excited 🔥🔥

[@blackestbill7454]

This is so sick!

[@aequanimus63247]

Thank you for an amazing high effort video! 👌

[@xanestudios]

This is sooo cool

[@FlamespeedyAMV]

i wish we got more high budget games made with PS1 Graphics, we don't have limitations anymore

[@polakuu]

Thats more likely to happen with indie games.. AAA studios most likely won't make games with those graphics

[@ilive2drive651]

​@@polakuuyea they prefer to spend 6 years on multi million dollar titles with teams of 300 developers and release them on high end modern systems so we can all say "meh' instead of paying for them ....

[@30aragon]

@FlamespeedyAMV "we don't have limitations anymore" That's why! PS1 ugly graphics were a limitation, not a feature.

[@pwnisher]

Play Signalis! That game is SOOO good!!!!

[@oldmanbiscuit7518]

​@@polakuuand yet they wonder why all their games have been flopping for the past 3 years

[@retromaru]

this was interesting, thank you!

[@digimaks]

That's hilarious! I love it! I feel inspired to try that too!

[@Scouty]

Another outstanding video! Love this style!

[@pwnisher]

Much love Scouty!

[@LoganPowerTV]

Wow! You are a legend!!

[@alexg963]

I’m happy this graphical style is getting more popular recently. Just like pixel art before it, I think people are realizing it has its own charm and artistic merit and is a perfectly viable medium for modern games and art. My question would be if anyone thinks that this trend will continue going forward, and we will see more recent graphics from like the Xbox 360 era have a similar resurgence? Or will there be an uncanny valley of sorts, with graphics like that which are closer to photorealism perhaps not visually feeling quite right?

[@TUKMAK]

That sound never gets old

[@jordanjamison97]

when it comes to the flat textures of the plants, i think it's important to make it so that they are ALWAYS forward facing the camera. A quirk of old graphics was the texture rotated to stay in line with the camera in order to not break the illusion of 2d texture (even though it constantly broke that illusion)

[@vadimboris3820]

Pure gold ❤

[@TheFunniBaconMan]

I didn't even realize this was a Pwnisher video at first. When I saw Clint, I thought "Wait a minute, I recognize him."

[@ThePS1Addict]

Great video!

[@AnilSenkurt]

00:45 blew my mind :O

[@Disthron]

*You've never seen vertex wobbling on another system* I guess you didn't have a PC back in the day. Lots of 3D PC games from around 93 -> 98 had this effect. Tomb Raider, Terminal Velocity, Big Red Racing. It was all over the place in early 3D games.

[@stevenmartinez5655]

Why do you so generously publish such educational and entertaining content for free?

[@maratomarov8346]

Thank you very much for the video 👍🏻

[@CryptToneMusic]

I'm so obsessed with PS1 graphics im trying to force myself to learn blender so maybe one day i can make a simple animation. It's gonna be a long journey for sure

[@handen]

4:02 pronounced "gif" correctly, instant like and subscribe

[@hrnekbezucha]

Also affine texture mapping. You know how the textures shear at the edges of screen.

[@patrickmeyer2598]

You must write your own software renderer with a fast integer based floor function, and nearest neighbor texture filtering and no perspective correct texture mapping.

[@brunobordini7696]

Amazing!

[@hexagonsun]

Sweet video Clint! Thanks again for helping me create a crosshair reticle 14 years ago.

[@NotAProducer888]

Watching this as a non-dev made me appreciate the actual genius of the PS1. Japan is ahead of it's time.

[@santitabnavascues8673]

PSX couldn't draw perspective correct polygons, the warping came from those polygons being subdivided when they were close to the camera. Also, playstation GTE used fixed point arithmetic to transform vertex positions into screen space, but instead of normalized device coordinates, it used screen coordinates, so in the lack of further precision, vertices snaped to the closest integer coordinate, also, ps1 color was 16 bit so it needed to rely on dithering to display 24bit graphics colors. Finally, the poly budget was pretty limited, and scenes were usually composed of 2000-2500 triangles and 4 256x256 textures at most. So imitating such effects is currently pretty complex as none of the current hardware has those limitations exposed as functionality.

[@pwnisher]

Super insightful! Thanks for the deets!

[@BlakeEM]

How can it be a "bit of a different look" and "100% Accurate" at the same time? This doesn't look like PS1 to me, since the dithering and texture warping are different (they are applied to the entire texture, not how it is on the PS1). It would have been more interesting if you made it render using integers.

[@gbya2247]

Jood work! Jreat video!:)

[@liraco_mx]

You get a like just for including footage of Einhander. That game needs a remake! Oh, and the video tutorial was cool too. 😜

[@EOE808]

What's the game at the 00:28 second mark? It looks so familiar

[@AppNasty]

Einhänder