The Glitch that Broke Link's Cel Shading

The first complete explanation of why this truly bizarre glitch occurred in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
🐦 / jasperrlz
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Glitch originally discovered by reddit user /u/Rangers_of_the_North:
📰 / odd_graphical_glitch_f...
🎵 Yasuaki Iwata - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Shrine of Trials ( • Shrine (The Legend of ... )
🎵 Yasuaki Iwata - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Hateno Village (Day) ( • Hateno Village (Day) -... )
🎵 Arvi Teikari - Baba Is You - Tree Is Shift - Deep forest ( • Baba Is You OST - Tree... )
🎵 Barry "Epoch" Topping - Paradise Killer - Leaving ( • Leaving )
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🎵 猫叉Master - Elebits - Story Mode ( • Elebits Music - Story ... )
🎵 Jasper - Epoch ( • Epoch )
🎥 [Vinesauce] Vinny - Zelda: Breath of the Wild (part 35) ( • [Vinesauce] Vinny - Ze... )
🎥 Breaking Conventions with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild ( • Breaking Conventions w... )
🎥 Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Final Mix 100% Walkthrough | Part 1 - Destiny Island ( • Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ... )
🎥 PC Longplay [733] Jet Set Radio ( • PC Longplay [733] Jet ... )
🎥 Okami - 31 - please help me! ( • Okami - 31 - please he... )
🎥 Katamari Damacy REROLL - 12 - missing kettle ( • Katamari Damacy REROLL... )
🎥 Team Fortress 2 (2021) - Gameplay (PC UHD) [4K60FPS] ( • Team Fortress 2 (2021)... )
🎥 Longplay of Metroid Prime [HD] ( • Longplay of Metroid Prime )
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🎥 Balloons Aloft Above the Grapes - Gaylon L. Yancy ( flickr.com/photos/geewhypics/... )
🎥 DRAGON BALL FIGHTERZ Full Game Walkthrough - No Commentary (DragonBallFigherZ Full Game) 2018 ( • DRAGON BALL FIGHTERZ F... )
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🎥 Hideo Kojima reveals Metal Gear Solid V at GDC 2013 HD ( • Hideo Kojima reveals M... )
🎥 The Rendering Technology of KILLZONE 2 ( www.gdcvault.com/play/1330/Th... )
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🎥 Super Mario Odyssey (6/42) - Metro Kingdom ( • Super Mario Odyssey (6... )
🎥 Unity 5 Graphics - Lighting Overview ( • Unity 5 Graphics - Lig... )
📰 www.vg247.com/2017/08/30/the-...
📰 www.ign.com/articles/2017/08/...
📰 kotaku.com/theres-a-tiny-spot...
📰 advances.realtimerendering.co... ( Chapter 7: Shading in Valve's Source Engine )
📰 gist.github.com/idbrii/e39fe9... ( Breath of the Wild talks at CEDEC2017 )
📰 jp.ign.com/cedec-2017/16963/n...
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💜 Jacob, Jasmine, Argle Bargle, 3moon, Will
Special Thanks: Matthew Seiji Burns, Swiffy22
00:00 Intro
03:37 The Glitch that Broke Link's Cel Shading
33:50 Channel Update

[@cantremember6794]

This dude made a 35 minute video on this 🤦‍♂️

[@hi_tech_reptiles]

It's damn good too. Learned a lot about modern game renderering.

[@sohn7767]

Coding be like

[@Cristian-ks3hy]

And it is so good!

[@chrispy5249]

Yeah, he needed 35 minutes to explain how the game's graphics work and the tricks the developers pulled off to make the game look the way it is in a comprehensible manner, it's very informative for those looking to gamedev or just like hearing about programming. What would you do with those 35 minutes?

[@MrHomelessHobos]

@@chrispy5249 I’d make a bowl of Mac and cheese

[@nolankanski9116]

Only software engineers would think of making lighting and shading faster by rendering their frame 60 times each frame instead of once

[@dkosmari]

A lot of these passes happen in parallel. The GPU is really good at doing a lot of similar operations in parallel. What the video failed to mention is that the techniques also evolve according to the hardware. In the past, these multi-pass techniques would be severely limited by the amount of parallelism available; it wouldn't necessarily slow down frame rate, but would introduce a lot of delay until the frame is ready for displaying. That would make the game feel like it has input lag, even though it has good frame rate overall; each frame takes a long time to bake in the GPU.

[@JasperRLZ]

All of these calculations would have to happen even if they were still done separately for each object -- calculating the pixel's facing direction, computing stuff like shadows and fog and wrinkle maps, accumulating all the incoming light, and doing the material shading. It just feels like a lot more when each one of those stages is broken out to a lot of different buffers.

[@Inversion10080]

@@JasperRLZ It's like seeing the water is higher when it's poured into a narrower glass. It's the same amount of water, but it's taken in a different shape that may look like more.

[@TheCrewExpendable]

@@JasperRLZ it is impressive that Nintendo got a high quality deferred rendering solution working so well on what is essentially mobile class hardware. A lot mobile games go with forward rendering because, for one, differed tends to require a lot more memory (need to store all the various buffers somewhere). Not to say the forward is limited to mobile. I believe Call of Duty goes with what they call a “Forward+” renderer.

[@0xD1CE]

@@TheCrewExpendable The switch uses the Nvidia tegra GPU. It's a true Nvidia graphics chip so it can handle the higher bandwidth. Also it's possible to do deferred rendering on mobile via tiled rendering - basically just breaking up the buffer into smaller sections. A lot of newer games are using this method.

[@LowSpecGamer]

In 35 minutes you managed to completely explain systems that I have been trying to understand for years. No other video on the topic comes close for beginners, and a worthy follow up the Mario Galaxy video. This is extraordinary

[@gamecastcollective]

wait a minute? you here?

[@KTSpeedruns]

This is exactly how I felt about this.

[@TeknoThom]

Fun fact now that TotK is out: They actually tried fixing the Bridge of Hylia one, but there’s some of it that they missed and you can still see a cel-shadeless Link (although it is a bit more finicky). It seems some changes to Link’s textures were made (aside from just Rauru’s arm) as now you can see thick, black outlines around where Link’s abs would be

[@alexgao2587]

damn so link got more jacked?

[@serialdreamer8386]

​@@alexgao2587He ain't no twink anymore. 🥶

[@VicerimusMortem]

​@@serialdreamer8386Yeah, he's a himbo now.

[@deepcanionstudioita3818]

i don't think they missed it i just think they fixed it only where the decal is fully transparent, fixing it further probably is not possible with their engine

[@notnullnotvoid]

@@serialdreamer8386 he's a twunk now

[@Benlucky13]

I definitely feel like lighting is one of those things where if you do it right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all. it feels so natural when well executed it's easy to take for granted all the dedication it took behind the scenes to be that way. even coming into this video i didn't expect how many layers there were to it. fascinating stuff

[@strangejune]

Sound and music design too. They're not thankless, but they are easy to overlook when done well.

[@ThunderCurrie]

dude I love futurama

[@IofSheikah]

People won’t notice when it’s right but when something is off it’s jarring

[@ebetg4191]

@@IofSheikah totally, kind of an uncanny valley vibe

[@KorriTimigan]

My mind was blown when you started playing with the lighting on a flat image in real time. I felt like a kid again, seeing something I never could have thought existed, like magic!

[@wolfetteplays8894]

Same

[@tf_d]

Mine too!

[@JasperRLZ]

Thanks for the video suggestion in the first place, Korri!

[@AaronRotenberg]

The secret of course is that it's not really a "flat" image at all, but a 3-D image encoded as colors for representation purposes. The normal buffer holds all the direction information necessary to reproduce the first light bounce off the object when combined with the material information such as the albedo (surface color) buffer. It's like you are storing a bas relief of the entire visible scene. The concept of modifying the light in an otherwise static scene is actually a whole field in computer graphics called "relighting" that is dedicated to finding ways to do this in real time for cases beyond the simple first bounce from point sources that's shown in the video.

[@KorriTimigan]

@@JasperRLZ Wait, did I?? Hahahaha! What a wonderful memory I have 🤣

[@brynshannon6692]

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all." Perhaps one of my most favourite things of all is seeing how something is done right, and learning to appreciate it all the more. It doesn't just make me appreciate the thing itself, but the people doing them, and I think it's made me appreciate people in general more. The things we're willing to do to entertain others can feel like such an unnecessarily nice gesture.

[@vindieu]

that philosophy warms my heart.

[@planetbumble5060]

Nice Futurama reference

[@Viral-Mage]

The section around 16:36 where you demonstrated how a normal map can make a 2D image appear to have 3D lighting literally made me gasp. It seems so obvious having it explained this way, but I'm sure it took a lot of people a lot of work to get it to this point! Please keep making videos on whatever fascinates you most. You will have an audience :).

[@Diwasho]

Indeed. I've known about Normal Maps for a while, knew what they do and how they look in their raw form but I never knew WHY they look like that or the specific details of how they work. This video explains it incredibly well.

[@strangejune]

@@Diwasho Maps like that make a lot more sense when you don't think of the channels as representing color! Just like the channels in an ordinary image are data representing color, the channels in a map represent all kinds of details relevant to rendering.

[@snufhuffboy5101]

I'm just surpised that people dont know what normal maps are haha

[@brightrrs1740]

@@snufhuffboy5101 Knowing how many people can't install a Wi-Fi printer will blow your mind then.

[@liambaron7112]

SAME !

[@GGreenHeart]

I've seen a lot of normal maps from my own decades of peeking behind curtains, but never *truly* understood them until this video. I felt totally dumbstruck when you made it sound almost basic- and it's such a cool technique! I'm thoroughly floored by how easy you made all of these incredibly complex concepts sound, and how naturally you explained them. Whatever you deep-dive into next: I can't wait to hear about it. And take your time- we can't imagine the amount of polish and edge-sanding that goes into making these videos seem so simple ;)

[@Starschulz]

Fantastic video. Almost everything you went over there about rendering was unknown entirely to me, despite what i thought i knew about it. when you were going over the fan theories as to why it happened, I figured it would be some kind of mesh in the way with a transparent material over it, And all the leadup to you mentioning what it actually was, all just lined up perfectly as you were explaining exactly how it all fit together.

[@Cliffordlonghead]

Did u hack?

[@Starschulz]

@@lederp42 Im 4 133t h4ck3rm4n

[@Diddz]

@@lederp42 unlisted video, early view and comment, then publishing a day later (we only see the publish date, not upload date)

[@saxosipho]

@@lederp42 Patreon exclusive early viewing.

[@decb.7959]

I sort-of understood deferred shading before, but this video made it super clear, and the glitch at the core of the video really helped me understand everything. In the demo at 16:37, are you also using the depth buffer? Otherwise it seems like the far wall would be illuminated, and the light wouldn't have the falloff on the ground.

[@le__birb]

That demo confused me as well, and depth would seem to be the missing piece of information.

[@JasperRLZ]

Yes, that's correct. I didn't want to take the time to explain a depth buffer. My original video script used a directional light, and those two buffers would indeed be all that's needed for that case, but an animating point light looks a lot better and is easier to understand, so I took a small creative liberty and changed the directional light to a point light, even though I still don't mention the depth buffer. Good eye :)

[@le__birb]

@@JasperRLZ Ah, that makes sense. I must say the point light did make for a much more compelling visual! Loved the video!

[@goeiecool9999]

​@@JasperRLZ Just for directional lighting? Even for a point light I don't understand how the system would know the far wall is too far away to receive light without looking at the depth buffer.

[@JasperRLZ]

I meant that directional lighting wouldn't require a depth buffer, since it has no distance falloff. Point lighting requires one.

[@Seb001ean]

I don’t think I’ve ever learned as much about a single field within such a short time span. This video has led to me understanding many systems within game dev that I haven’t been able to graft just yet. I really hope you make more videos just like this one, analyzing the reason for something and meanwhile explaining so many other useful and interesting graphics tech solutions and standards. Mad respect! ❤

[@Nimphious]

My best guess for the buffer at 18:54 is probably a roughness buffer, or more likely some kind of specular multiplier/exponent buffer. The second one at 19:00 might be a mask for world weather/rain effects. (Link is likely black because the weather effects on characters is likely handled entirely separately from the world.)

[@rafatvaz]

This is probably the best video on introduction to buffers I've seen. After effects scene blew my mind even though I've programed shaders before. Congrats dude, this seems like it was a ridiculous amount of work, but well worth it!

[@stickstudio]

Dude, that was amazing. I can't imagine the amount of time and effort you put into making this, but you nailed it. You made it simple and cohesive enough that even a dummy like me could follow without feeling completely lost, and that's a truly impressive feat. Thanks for all your hard work, and I look forward to the next video.

[@maxrelax5940]

hahaa i literally typed this comment 5 seconds ago and now i see heaps of comments mentioning this exact thing. really goes to show how good this vid was

[@mkv2718]

what you said about lighting is also true when movies went from black and white to color: because there were no colors to worry about with b&w film, all you had to worry about was the lighting, and even tho those movies have no color many have aged well because film makers were paying attention to that, whereas when color film became available a lot of movies had very flat lighting because film makers became too focused on the colors in their shots and the cinematography suffered. it really wasn’t until movies like The Godfather that we started see really dynamic lighting in color movies like we did with b&w ones.

[@Skyewardbound]

I feel like a similar transition happened when we started utilizing CGI more as well, and we're only just now figuring it out

[@SomeRandoQuacko]

The fact that all those images are generated and processed around 30 times per a single second is insane

[@ShockMicro]

this video gets into all of the fun stuff about the rendering in an easy way to understand for me! and when it finally gets back to the main question, i really felt that "a-ha!" moment when every little detail you mentioned throughout fell into place, it was really satisfying to watch!

[@brandongerhardt9954]

Truly the avengers endgame of video game lighting and rendering

[@IanZamojc]

Definitely more of this. Reflections could be an interesting deep dive. You could start with the Build engine (Duke 3D, Shadow Warrior, etc) requiring you to create a hollow room on the other side of a mirror to duplicate geometry into. Then move up to reflection maps, reflection cubes, dynamic reflections, screen space reflections, etc.

[@jeckert547]

Whoa! I actually found this lighting bug on my own a long time ago. I didn’t realize it was so significant to people online. Breath of the Wild is so big that it feels cool and rare that I found this organically.

[@squag6447]

This man deserves at least 1 million subs. This is the type of stuff that I find really interesting, but really intimidating so it’s nice to have something that is really easy to understand, with showing tons of visuals and examples, yet still teaches a lot and goes to over half an hour.

[@bennettcyphers7230]

I agree with Squag

[@jeanclaudethedarklord6205]

agreed

[@reptarien]

I went through most of the video going "It's an occlusion pane!" Until you went SUPER indepth into deferred lighting, and I was half correct, but it was super interesting to learn why I was only half right, that something was being occluded, but not in a way an occlusion pane works. Super interesting and I love learning about rendering techniques in games. Great video as per usual :)

[@amymason156]

Something similar for me, from the start I had the feeling an invisible transparent object was causing the effect, but I never would have guessed that the effect was because Link was being rendered as part of the terrain.

[@strangejune]

@@amymason156 You could say he became one with the Earth!

[@hiroantag]

I just rewatched your Super Mario Galaxy video a few days ago and this was a nice treat. I love your deep dive videos, you manage to explain games in an incredibly visual way to the point where it's crazy you don't have a devkit or something. Keep em up!

[@deadmetalbr]

16:40 That's a really good explanation and I can't believe I never knew lighting was as efficient as this from the computer's perspective. That you can re-light an entire scene as though you hadn't even taken the picture yet is kind of a mindfuck when you break it down like that. Fascinating!

[@DUHRIZEO]

I've been looking forward to you showing off more BOTW since your short from last year. Nobody dives as deep or creates visuals like you Jasper. This blew me away! Thank you so much for all the work you put into these videos and your website.

[@whynotanyting]

Fascinating. Some concepts are familiar to me, but to put into perspective all the different layers that an engine must render before showing you the final frame is insane. Now to do it 60 times or more each second sounds like a luxury.

[@strangejune]

Rendering that many frames is easy when they're so simple relative to what it would have to do otherwise.

[@kaiser9321]

I love people actually explaining what’s going on behind the scenes instead of giving me half-assed explanations Lighting is very scary for me because I don’t even know how you put all of that stuff together

[@VerbDoesStuff]

I can't IMAGINE how much work this video took to make. Absolutely phenomenal job.

[@mrhokckey7544]

This is one of the coolest videos I’ve ever seen… i never thought I’d ever be able to wrap my head around something like lighting and graphics in video games, it always seemed so complicated. Game development is so sick

[@B4FT]

It’s been a while but your videos are always gonna be worth it.

[@amazingagent1404]

This is genuinely one of the most informative and entertaining videos I have ever found. You have an amazing talent that you should be proud of. Your channel is awesome and I can only hope you grow fast

[@kiwaminski]

Completely agree. Was engrossed the entire time and the whole thing was both enlightening and fascinating.

[@theSato]

@@kiwaminski Heh heh, "enlightening"

[@kiwaminski]

@@theSato Huehehe. Didn't even notice the pun, nice catch

[@Calebanton]

This was an amazing video! There was so much dense information made very clear and easy to understand. It felt like it was perfectly paced so that you don’t have to pause/replay to fully understand but it was also moving at a break neck pace. I’d love more videos like these. You spoke of spending so long polishing a game that no one could can notice the hard work, and I know lots of that is going on in this video

[@FaliusAren]

I'm convinced that in a few years this channel will have measurably helped a generation of graphics programmers excel at their craft seriously you always do such a great job of explaining complicated concepts without using even a hint of allegory or metaphor. a mess of normals, front buffers, back buffers, vertex shaders, pixel shaders, whatever the fuck else, somehow made accessible with good rhetorical ability

[@iamhand]

Definitely not scared away by the technical details. As a technical artist that dabbles in rendering, it's extremely interesting! I like seeing the breakdown, because watching your process might actually help me get better at tackling rendering bugs that get thrown at me ha

[@gulfgiggleanimations4472]

I remember finding out that new super Mario bros U is shaded with normal maps. I thought it was really interesting how they baked in the lighting data like that. Now I’m finding out that breath of the Wild simplifies shading by converting every rendered object into a normal map to then apply the lighting onto. What’s even crazier is that we have the capability of rendering the same frame like 20 times, then compiling all the separate information, and that all happens 60 times a second on Nintendo hardware. Takes me back to when I learned how CRT TV’s work.

[@SoapSoapCrayon]

BOTW targets 30, not 60. It barely hits 30 most of the time too. Deferred shading on switch is incredibly poorly performant since rendering to a pixel more than once basically obliterates the GPU, and you're extremely memory capped so it's hard to store much information in the gbuffer.

[@williamxie5901]

You don’t render the same frame 20 times. I doubt even a 4090 doesn’t have the room to do that. There’s a hardware feature called Multiple Render Target (MRT) allowing one render pass outputting to multiple buffers that stores different geometry data. Also switch is pretty limited on memory bandwidth. And a full-fledged deferred shading pipeline eats bandwidth like a monster. I’m actually very surprise to see how many Nintendo first party games managed to pull out deferred shading in switch - especially many with physically based materials

[@HedgieMaster05]

Man, I have never seen any of your other vids before and this popped into my recommended, and this was INCREDIBLE! The explanation was in great detail, but presented in a way that didn't make it boring or too technical to understand to the average viewer, which is something that unfortunately you don't see too often these days. This obviously took a long time to make because of how polished it is, the choice of music goes well and isn't too intrusive, the custom examples in post-editing that you created just for the video, the comparisons to other games' visual systems, and everything in between! Plus, this is a topic that I haven't seen anywhere else much, so this was totally new to me and so interesting. I'd love more videos like this!

[@rinux55]

I love it man. I just found out about your channel a couple a days ago, and remember being sad that your last video was a year ago. Nice to see new material so soon!

[@awesomness6775]

This notification popped up right as I got on KZbin to watch something. Guess I don't have to pick a video this time! With that and me re-watching the original Wind Waker cell-shading video a few days ago it almost feels like you're spying on me...

[@JumbaJumby]

To be fair in the village example, realistically forward rendering should be using occlusion culling to prevent the whole village from being rendered as well.

[@tonylazuto9001]

Yeah I think that line in particular undersells the main benefits of deferred lighting, which is mostly that adding more light sources is practically free

[@HadynLander]

Even without occlusion culling, the opaque pass typically draws front to back and can early-out on fragments which are obscured... Buuuuut I think the example works well in a "lies to children" sort of way. For folks who know none of this stuff, it's a close-enough description of one of the main benefits of deferred lighting which is easy to understand.

[@cylemons8099]

@@HadynLander Doesn't that mean that the objects have to be sorted before being sent to the gpu? Is the sorting overhead less than what it would've costed to shade obscured pixels? What about large objects like terrain?

[@timmie2k3]

@@cylemons8099 nah, you can also do a depth prepass and then only draw pixels at equal depth in the main pass. Sorting would just make that a little more efficient, but a depth prepass makes sorting not necessary.

[@saltwyn]

I’ve been waiting for a new video of yours! I always kept thinking about the scrolling textures and how well produced it was. Great work yet again!

[@mrabomination]

I would absolutely love more technical deep dives, you do such a great job at visualizing all these complex systems in a way that makes them approachable to the average watcher. Glad to see you again!

[@endergeek236]

I've known about normals for a while, but this video did such a good job of explaining the how and why, and the after effects demonstration was brilliant. Also, OH MY GOD YES MORE PLEASE!

[@colororb4105]

Incredible work, I'd love to see more of these! It felt like you were dissecting a luxury car engine and showing how all the pieces work together

[@roastbeef1416]

Your editing is insane genuinely. I love the effort put into this so much man also love the choice of baba is you music!

[@mercable7574]

Welcome back! I'm about to start a degree in game design and have been binging your videos. Thanks for breaking stuff down so interestingly and coherently!

[@invisghosty]

I absolutely love how in depth your videos are and how much effort you put into making the visuals. It looks like you're using something like RenderDoc to get access to the buffers which is great. But it's absolutely impressive that you went the extra mile and showed the buffers getting written to and what they would look like before and after the decals. Especially on the glowing orb thing. That would've been so easy to just gloss over without going through the effort of getting a visual for it but you did the extra work and it's appreciated. I hope you take pride in this because you absolutely should.

[@liraco_mx]

Blows my mind to see so many passes to get this game looking like it does. Major props to the artists and the devs that made it possible. And nice to see you back with another video! Always dig your breakdowns

[@CosmicEternityCD]

This was such a wonderful video! This glitch has been scratching at the back of my mind for yeaaars now, and not only do I get to learn what caused it, but also came away with so much more knowledge that really helps complete more of my understanding of rendering. You make everything so easy to understand, and I really, genuinely appreciate it! I would love to see more technical deep dives like this, these breakdowns are endlessly fascinating!

[@ElTaitronAnim]

This is seriously incredible!! It's mind-boggling just how complicated lighting can be, even though it's something most people probably take for granted, and you explained it in a compelling, understandable way. Your custom lighting demo was really impressive too. Amazing work! ...Seeing all of this in action also makes me think about how Game Freak really needs to learn some lessons from it all.

[@romajimamulo]

Doing lighting on the final image instead of the world is something I didn't realize was possible, but now I see it, it's amazing

[@CadeVoidlighter]

Incredibly well made video, actually made my day. Didn't think I'd be happily sat here watching 40 minutes of rendering techniques, but oh boy, I was fully engaged. Thank you Jasper!

[@The_JCM]

Amazing video. Please do all the tech deep dives you want, I'll watch them! You're great at explaining that stuff, the effort is greatly appreciated!

[@z098z]

I had just recently discovered your channel thanks to the algorithm recommending me your video's on Galaxy and Wind Waker, and I LOVED THEM! I was a bit disappointed that you hadn't uploaded in a year so seeing this video in my recommendations made me happier than I expected. These kind of video's are just SO damn interesting, I loved every second of it! The way you explain everything is just so clean and understandable for someone who has very little technical knowledge about how video games are made, but would love to learn more about it. There's just something magical about understanding even the smallest things in how a game works that you've put hundreds of hours into. I'm already looking forward to any of your future video's!

[@UnspokenChicxulub]

This all reminds me of my 8th grade math teacher. He would do this thing pretty often where he would answer someone's question with something seemingly unrelated, but as the explanation goes on he slowly shows ties with what he's explaining and the original question, until eventually the thing he was explaining which at first seemed completely unrelated is now the basis of the exact, concise answer to the student's question. Thanks for the great video :33

[@ZachHixsonTutorials]

Great video! I used to work as a 3D developer, so I love seeing breakdowns like this and getting a glimpse at how other people set up their stuff. I would have liked if the tangents were split into different videos as they detracted from the main focus, but I can tell a lot of work went into this video, keep it up!

[@nankinink]

GDC has a lot of internal stuff showcasing, it's pretty good resource to check the other studios' pipelines

[@Clodd1]

This explanation is absolutely insane! Really professional editing and narrative.

[@IsabelleChiming]

Wow, I was just remembering your channel and how sad I was that you didn't upload more, and now here we are!! This was an amazing watch, thanks so much

[@QWERTYCommander]

This is probably the best explanation of deferred rendering I've seen. I know a bit about rendering techniques but I never really got what made deferred rendering so ubiquitous since the early 2010's. This provided a great explanation for it.

[@Dezomm]

This channel is a gem. Such a lovely video you've managed to create, it's pure pleasure to watch. So much information, presented in a hugely entertaining and educational way.

[@pie75]

I love your technical videos the most. I'm surprised at how often the technique of building from first principle surprises me. Especially the things I already know. I've already used normal textures in a 2D environment, but seeing them manipulated manually in real-time in a video editor still gave me a youthful joy.

[@adamschlinker972]

Your videos are so high quality. I'm in a Computer Graphics course right now, so this is absolutely fascinating.

[@oatenn-o]

Then, when the world needed him most, he came back!

[@abrahambrookes1927]

This was absolutely amazing. Thank you very much for the put together!

[@Joshimuz]

Awesome video :D I studied game development before Deferred Lighting was a mainstay thing so I've kinda always been scared/intimated by it, but this really summarised it quite well, and I got to learn about a fun glitch!

[@Geddy135]

lot's of people are confused why he'd make such a long video about a single bug, but I think the bug was really just an excuse to learn about the deffered lighting and I'm 100% fine with that. I love learning about this sort of stuff.

[@Reac2]

TL:DR : There is a layer over the hole that forces everything behind it to be shaded like the wall, which they forgot to remove originally when they made the hole. So Link's cell shading disappears ,because it's replaced by the shading meant for the wall. This also applies to other post-processing effects, such as the glow of the bombs.

[@guitarzilla555]

I've never seen a more elegant explanation and demonstration of deferred lighting and normal mapping. Concepts I was aware of, but struggled to understand until now. This is one of the best videos on game development I've ever watched. Subscribed.

[@samjensen1513]

This was incredible, I had no idea how much went into lighting or even how they even accomplish it. Very educational, I'd love more of this content!!

[@Noah-tn5bc]

This video has been one of the most informative looks into modern 3D game engine lighting systems that I have ever seen. Everyone knows how well-engineered and well-developed Zelda BOTW is - with it's many dynamic systems all interacting together in beautiful ways - but taking technical deep dives into it really makes you respect the work they put into this game, even as someone who hasn't played it yet. This is what happens when a modern AAA game studio puts the time and effort into a game that it deserves, and doesn't release it until it's ready and complete.

[@Noah-tn5bc]

Now compare this to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet (for those of you who don't know - despite the fact that Pokemon is one of the highest grossing franchises of any type of media, ever made in history - the games continue to be rushed messes; these recent releases are so unplayable performance wise that Nintendo has issued refunds to players disappointed with the game's performance. I just want to highlight that those games are being released years after BOTW did on the same hardware, after devs would have learned more about how to develop for the Switch, both open world games. Really shows you a lot, and this type of thing is why I stopped buying rushed corporate cash grab AAA games)

[@TechArtTom]

Hey, you're an incredible video creator man. The amount of effort you put in does not go unnoticed. Well done!

[@marin-ip3np]

Oh man, I’m so glad this showed up in my feed. Incredibly interesting, very entertaining and really neat editing. Instant sub!

[@kytechnelson]

Your deep-dive videos are incredible. Your videos on Wind-Waker cell-shading and Super Mario Galaxy are what brought me to your channel. I learned a lot about modern graphics from this video and I hope you'll continue to make more videos like this. You explain these things in such a clear and effective way so much that you really help unwrap the magic of modern computer graphics.

[@christosgeorgiafentis4825]

I don't care how long it takes for you to upload a video. These videos are fascinating. Only you can explain how something works in a game in a manner everyone can understand. I hope I can work with 3D some day.

[@geo_licious]

As Arin Hansen would say: M O A R

[@Cliffordlonghead]

DID U HACK?

[@geo_licious]

@@Cliffordlonghead no, it was on his Patreon

[@ManOfDuck]

WOW. Fascinating stuff. And extremely well presented! Always a treat to get a vid from you

[@demantim]

Wow, what an excellent video on modern rendering techniques! Fascinating how much they can do with combining "flat" renders, and explained in such an accessible way. Kudos!

[@StevieRay.]

We need more Jasper in life

[@halfsine]

it's crazy how complicated game development truly is, most people just think its magic

[@amymason156]

If this isn't code and magic, though, what is?

[@halfsine]

@@amymason156 changed it to something better

[@dani3645]

Just dropping by to say thank you for making such a great piece of content. The level of detail and research that have gone into these 35 minutes is amazing. Making it freely available, insane. Thank you. This had definitely become one of my all-time favorite youtube videos

[@maxrelax5940]

such an interesting video and its put together so well too. the editings and pacings really polished, the information is super insightful and its baffling how easily i could understand some pretty complex game design concepts with your explainations. idk how you did it and i couldnt imagine the amount of time that mustve been put in to making this vid. im eagarly awaiting whatever content you make next but for now, time to check out your back catalogue.

[@chase_like_the_bank]

Your after effects relighting setup didn't require a depth buffer? How did that point light know to not light up pixels in outside of its radius?

[@JasperRLZ]

shhh i just didn't want to explain a depth buffer. my original script talked about a directional light which is really the 90% case but that just isn't as easy to understand visually so i changed it to a point light and told a white lie about that. but yes, the visualization used a depth buffer in that case. :)

[@AC-qu9ng]

I would love it if you made a video on Rain World and its lighting. The way the game turns its pixel art backgrounds into a seemingly-3D environment is an impressive achievement, especially for an indie game. If you haven't had the chance to play it, please at least check out a trailer!

[@-aexc-]

one of the best videos I've seen in a while. genuinely phenomenal work, loved the visualizations

[@Poly_0000]

Fascinating. I always wondered about render passes. So glad to see you put out a new video. Great work!

[@gallo123]

Another eye-opening video about things I didn't even know they exist. And for anyone reading this comment, if you have any resources for a beginner gamedev to learn about these techniques or how to implement them using Unity / Unreal Engine, please let me know in the replies... Thanks!

[@strangejune]

I would imagine this isn't something you "implement" in those engines as much as enable or use.

[@ppodders]

3 minutes in and I already know TPC could stand to watch this before they start cranking out the next pokemon disaster

[@stevenneiman1554]

I feel proud of myself for correctly guessing the basic idea of the problem (overzealous occlusion shading cutting out an expensive step because it thinks the pixels are occluded for some purposes but not others), but I had no idea how complicated it was. Cool video, I always love learning about the thought and effort that goes into something I barely consciously noticed.

[@dannywaving]

Fantastic video, all of your videos are extremely informative Jasper, ever since the Mario Galaxy scrolling textures video. It blew my mind to see the faux-3D lighting being done with AE!

[@joey199412]

Opposite of clickbait. The video was more interesting than the title made it seem.

[@photosynthescythe2939]

Love to see this kind of content. I’ve always seen glitches as a cool way to get behind the scenes of a game. Whether it be a t-posing model, a dev cube outside the map, or a lighting issue like this one. Replicable glitches show how systems work together by showing them fail to do so

[@TheMrLeoniasty]

Man, all this information is amazing, but the visuals !! You went above and beyond showing all the render passes and how they are composited together, how did you even manage to get them? Amazing work !

[@ZedEdge]

Just an amazing video all around. All the visual breakdowns and demonstrations are so next level.

[@LastSniki]

Such an amazing video - many Infos, well deliverd and awsome visuals you made for the explanations. Thank you soo much.

[@Mercuie]

This was such a great watch. Thank you so much for all the work on this. I love learning about this stuff.

[@PhoenixClank]

Yes, please more in-depth videos, this one is exactly what I needed to finally understand how deferred lighting works!

[@ChaonicMew]

Amazing video as always! Your channel is turning more and more into a treasure trove for game devs!! Also, Elebits was underrated and your use of its music gives me nostalgic goosebumps! Thank you so much for everything you're giving us!!

[@JoeFilms5420]

I was not expecting this video to be nearly as interesting as it was, thanks for sharing all of these details with us! It’s crazy how all of these tricks were pulled off in this game.

[@doritoman4159]

Loved the deep dive and I appreciate all the links you gave to your resources. Top notch work

[@lovelandisle]

Your videos are always such a treat, you break down complicated information in such easy to understand ways. Love it!!!

[@Flam1ngP0tat0]

Always a treat to see a new video from you pop up in my feed :)