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Anonymous09/13/24, 13:47No.995160PS2-Era Graphics
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
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Anon09/13/24, 14:16No.995161
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.
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Anon09/14/24, 10:54No.995238
>not good at texturing
oh no
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Anon09/14/24, 23:30No.995289
Japanese fighting games from the PS2 era have beautiful character models. That is all.
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Anon09/15/24, 16:22No.995345
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?
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Anon09/28/24, 20:58No.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=PhlmYuOJa_0
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Anon10/12/24, 03:20No.998055
>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.
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Anon10/12/24, 10:47No.998073
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.
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Anon10/16/24, 08:30No.998586
Sounds like a cool project!
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Anon10/17/24, 21:38No.998851
How would I go about texturing this in that old school PS2 style?
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Anon10/18/24, 18:11No.998975
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.
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Anon10/19/24, 00:07No.999011
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.
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Anon10/19/24, 13:12No.999069
>(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.
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Anon11/03/24, 12:07No.1000762
I'm in the process of creating a PS2-esk looking game myself. Picrel isn't finished yet but I've got the base details down. So yeah I know he has no nipples lol. Anyway, I say -esk because the painting workflow is the same I'm just using higher res textures (512 instead of 256) but with a generally lower poly count (my faces are static for instance since). I've studied a ton of PS2 models over the years, specifically from Rockstar Games and from games like Def Jam: Fight For New York which has AMAZING looking characters.Anyway, I'm not that great at painting yet but the advice I can give is definitely use something like 3Dcoat for texturing. I've tried painting in blender with many different add-ons over the years and its never as good. You can also bake your AO really quickly in 3dcoat to use as a lighting guide before turning it off. For realistic looking clothing like the pants I've done here, you want to find a base texture for the material it's made of from an image and create a seamless texture from it to fill the clothing with. Once you've done this you create 2 layers above it. A shade layer set to Multiply and a highlight layer set to Screen. Use a base color that matches your material when painting in both, shades being more saturated and hue shifted toward blue and highlights being desaturated and shifted toward yellow/orange generally.It really fucking sucks theres pretty much zero tutorials online for painting REALISTIC textures by hand into a single texture. Almost ALL hand painting tutorials are for the World of Warcraft stylized look.
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Anon11/12/24, 09:23No.1001461
Anyone has any examples of sixth gen era characters with long hair or long beard?
I can't think of any right now and I really want to study how the hair was done
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Anon11/16/24, 15:57No.1001789
God I love 6th and 7th gen Japanese vidya models
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Anon11/16/24, 20:42No.1001831
Ps2 or heavily stylised, less realistic graphics with more modern physics/animation/movement is the best way to go
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Anon11/24/24, 23:49No.1002334
If your bad at texturing a really effective technique is to photobash then touch up the texture with added shadows and highlights. The pic rel is a 512x512 texture done by using Blenders stencil feature and was edited with Clip Studio Paint. Since your a solo dev this technique would probably be the best as it's quite quick while still being able to produce that early to mid 2000s style. I go for a more 2000-2005 style but you could definitely make some stuff more akin to model posted in the OP with some trial and error, although you would definitely need some more texture painting. As you said its really difficult to find resources on this era of graphics but I've done some digging and here is some stuff I've found.This channel is from a guy who is versed in the style and has a lot of good resources on his website too. Specifically has a really good character tutorial that's even using the software that was used during the era, 3D Studio Max and Bodypaint
https://www.youtube.com/@videogamemakerI've also found some books on the subject, particularly one from 2006 called "3D Game Textures: Create Professional Game Art Using Photoshop". It might be hard to find torrents of books like these due to the age and lack of interest but they're a resource straight from that era. I haven't started reading them yet because I'm working on a project atm so I can't say how effective they are but there is certainly some techniques to be gleaned.Also study the models and environments from games of that time, I take a ton of screenshots from games like Oblivion, Postal, RTCW, and the like. I'm glad that other people are passionate about this style, so many games are based off of PS1 but this "mid poly" era gets skipped over entirely it seems.
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Anon12/09/24, 05:20No.1003136
what do you call this look when the characters are white but very clearly made by an oriental game studio?
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Anon12/24/24, 07:19No.1003942
The PS2 polycount is probably a touch higher, and the texture size a tad lower, but the following might helphttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6AIWMWhXLA
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Anon01/24/25, 06:17No.1006108
i thought this video was interesting although it doesn't really answer your question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_-K56PVeh4
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Anon01/25/25, 03:10No.1006164
Are there any good books focused on model topology for this kind of thing?
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Anon01/29/25, 04:42No.1006425
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW_MyOrgNpY
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Anon01/31/25, 20:50No.1006616
Just came from another thread, I finished the CG cookie Blender beginner Course and my endgame goal is ps2/psp era graphics.Do you guys have any recommendations of videos, courses, or anything to help me get to that?
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Anon02/24/25, 23:17No.1008090
What do you do with materials in Unreal or Unity for these graphics? Unreal seems like PBR would mess with these graphics and you would have to customize the materials heavily. At least Unity has legacy shaders I guess.Or am I just a pleb and am overthinking the material settings?
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Anon04/03/25, 22:32No.1010539
A generation of retards whose entire comprehension of 3D visualization boils down to a single platform's hardware optimization. No words like specular, microtextures, 3 point lighting, crushed dynamic range, subsurface scattering are necessary because you, anon, you LIVED playing video games for years and it's granted you the only vocabulary you need, pee ess plus digit
God the wonders you'll bring us with your BASED nostalgia aesthetic, I'm erect just thinking about it
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Anon04/05/25, 15:34No.1010647
So if my understanding is correct:
Older games mostly used Spec-Diffuse maps, so just specular and diffuse/transparency maps.
Occlusion maps existed, but were instead baked onto the diffuse mapModern workflows require roughness, diffuse, Normal, and occlusion maps, the normals being baked from a high-poly model/sculpt.
Specifically for the PS2, it seems it couldn't handle Normal maps at all (and some places tell me Bump maps only showed up at the tail end, idk)Does all of this sound right?
Honestly I don't know how much it matters if all you want to achieve is a "look". Like, it wouldn't make sense for me to merge my diffuse and occlusion if I have the option to layer them separately on modern systems...
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Anon04/07/25, 15:16No.1010722
how long before people is nostalgic for x360/ps3 era graphics? Somebody should be making a guide for that style already.
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Anon04/09/25, 06:33No.1010791
you offset the workload with bought and free assets for things that dont matter, and focus you effort on the things that do.
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Anon04/11/25, 20:35No.1010870
The truth is that if you actually studied and practiced the fundamentals of 3D then you wouldn't have bothered to make this thread. What you are hoping is some anon to give you an easy One Click answer. I recommend you to stop this and just learn how to use AI along with the rest of the larping niggers on this thread who responded before me
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Anon04/26/25, 11:51No.1011131
Okay I'm a complete retard at this and a beginner but I have a question.
Instead of painstakingly painting on the details on lowpoly models why not... sculpt them in zbrush and then bake that onto a lowpoly model?
That way it's not only gonna look the same but in different angles it will actually have geometry like bumps and muscles actually protruding and you know be raised and lowered instead of just being painted on and looking flat once you turn it.
Am I missing something?
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Anon04/26/25, 15:25No.1011138
ancient posts and thread, but baking from high poly onto low poly seems to work very well. I've struggled for ages when it comes to texture painting since I can't draw, and relying on photos for texturing has limits, plus procedural stuff like PBR can only get you so far
this allows me to quickly sculpt out a form, use Quad Remesher to get the low poly, then bake all the detail right on the low poly
you could likely get better results by manually box modeling over for the low poly, but I suck at that so I leave it to automation with QR
here's a post I made on the process
[/3/thread/992953#p1011119]I sculpt in blender since you can do the entire baking process in there, and it's free, but yeah this method works. I'm surprised that I've never really seen it discussed when it comes to PS1 low poly stuff. not sure how often the method was used for PS2 era visuals
only caveat is that you need to learn anatomy, but that's far easier than actually learning to draw, in my experience
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Anon05/09/25, 20:11No.1011718
you should check out acerola, he has a lot of good videos on computer graphics
https://youtu.be/y84bG19sg6U
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Anon05/11/25, 02:14No.1011798
anyone know where i can find the DOA xtreme volleyball (1 or 2) 3d models? the old approach to sexy models is quite unique, and i cant seem to find something similar
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Anon05/12/25, 13:01No.1011884
What's the pipeline to get a good enough looking quake-like model from a concept art?
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Anon06/23/25, 04:24No.1014074
Not OP (I just like haunting ground) but how would one go about making the different costumes for a character? Just remake the model x amount of times with different looks or reuse it and just model around it with interchangeable pieces in the engine?Additionally, how would you guys handle changes to the model such as how they clearly change the position of the breasts between models? Is there an easier way to do that without completely remaking the model each time?
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Anon07/27/25, 18:51No.1015930
>(but also because I’m solo and don’t have the time and resources to make too many high poly things)
Keep in mind that many PS2 games (though not all) baked their models from high poly models to begin with, and this is fairly important when it comes to matching the style, this is especially true of mechanical things. Here's an example from Armored Core 2 Age Age. I've pasted the in-game model over the high-poly model the texture was (likely) baked and edited from.Depending on how you want to handle the artstyle, your time savings may not be as great as you think. There's an exponential drop-off between in time savings between PS1 and modern, to PS2 and modern, to PS3 and modern. Every generation demands more detail. Atleast if you stay on the PS2 side of things, you don't need to do normal, roughness, or metalness maps. Most of the time, PS2 models just had the equivalent of colormap with baked lighting.If want something that's looks nicer than PS1 and are solo, I would strongly advise you go for the PS2 look more so than the PS3 look.
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Anon07/28/25, 23:11No.1016010
I'm currently examining some early PS2 Gundam games and it's kinda cool how SNES/PSX tile based the developers still made their games. Every square has a single texture. This could have been done much more efficiently.
Does anyone know how roads are made these days? Like those highly complex models that fuse with the landscape?
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Anon09/02/25, 18:05No.1017965
How was MGS3 made? I assume PS2 didn't have bump mapping, yet the game looks gorgeous the blades of grass look amazing as you crawl through them, the environment looks amazing.
Here's what I know:
1. Gouraud shading
2. No Bump/Normal mapping
What am I missing? How is the lighting handled on a PS2 game?
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Anon09/03/25, 11:05No.1017994
>havent visited /3/ in a year
>come back
>same thread on front pageholy hell AI really did a number on you guys. this board is getting deleted 100% sure
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Anon10/02/25, 21:51No.1019523
Make something else other than Reddit Hill ad nauseum
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Anon10/07/25, 03:57No.1019784
probs a throw in the dark but has anybody ripped the models from Toram online?
