Mimicking 90s-styled 3D lighting

Guideborn

Hello everyone! I'm an old school gamer and I really appreciate enjoy prerendered 3D sprites you see in games such as Donkey Kong, Shining: The Lost Ark, and Golden Sun. Examples being:





I want to emulate this style, then convert it to image sequences and give off that classic prerendered feel. Any tips for the right lighting? I use Unity3D if that matters.

a3D

If I'm not mistaken, at that time automatic indirect lighting was uncommon (this includes AO, final gather and GI), artists relied more on manually placed fill lights and ambient light (basically clamping blacks level slightly above pure black).
Stick with simple old shaders like the blinn-phong model. Definitely no SSS to be seen anywhere.
Bump maps badly converted from photos and simply placed on models were the norm, you can see a lot of them in PSX Final Fantasy materials like rocks and metals, even in older Pixar movies.
Most early 3D also shows pretty simple diffuse maps, or no texture at all, resulting in monochromatic areas with no colour detail except from what's provided by the lighting itself. I think the neck and belly area of that earth dragon is a flat color.
Some post-production might be beneficial, the images you posted look very saturated.

claydough

Unity centric... Flat shaded, vertex lit

http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/go-beyond-retro-pixel-art-with-flat-shaded-3d-in-unity--gamedev-12259




In Maya

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88665

Guideborn

a3D wrote: »

If I'm not mistaken, at that time automatic indirect lighting was uncommon (this includes AO, final gather and GI), artists relied more on manually placed fill lights and ambient light (basically clamping blacks level slightly above pure black).
Stick with simple old shaders like the blinn-phong model. Definitely no SSS to be seen anywhere.
Bump maps badly converted from photos and simply placed on models were the norm, you can see a lot of them in PSX Final Fantasy materials like rocks and metals, even in older Pixar movies.
Most early 3D also shows pretty simple diffuse maps, or no texture at all, resulting in monochromatic areas with no colour detail except from what's provided by the lighting itself. I think the neck and belly area of that earth dragon is a flat color.
Some post-production might be beneficial, the images you posted look very saturated.

Very informative. Thanks for that. Also, can you clarify what you mean by "saturated"?

a3D

Guideborn wrote: »

can you clarify what you mean by "saturated"?

Brilliant, intense colors, as in the HSV color model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV

SonicBlue

Probably the saturation was done the improve the readability on smaller TVs

Guideborn

a3D wrote: »

Brilliant, intense colors, as in the HSV color model
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV

Ok, I figured! Thanks everyone for the input. Really excited to try this now!

Shrike

Dont forget using gamma color space , it was pretty much all gamma back then I think

Guideborn

Shrike wrote: »

Dont forget using gamma color space , it was pretty much all gamma back then I think

Could you explain gamma color space to me?

Shrike

there are many good resources for gamma / linear space comparisons
Its a bit confusing all in all , I dont want to say 70% accurate things

Basically gamma color space makes your highlights overblown and your dark areas too dark, it is like a (bad) curve in photoshop essentially. You can emulate this look by just changing contrast for the worse as previously described with a curve in photoshop (or as post effect with a LUT) or use gamma space settings in your engine. Unity has a gamma space setting , for some ridiculous reason it is even on by default i think.

more info:
http://filmicgames.com/archives/299