A somewhat plastic quality...

I'm trying to make faux N64 graphics for a jokewad, and I need some help figuring out how to get that 'N64 Look.' The only way I have to describe that look is "a somewhat platic quality." I want to focus primarily on N64-like textures, but I have no idea how to achieve something stylistically similar. "Overstretched and colorful" is another way I see it. Has anyone here tried to make that certain quality in a texture pack? I know this is a bit vague, but if anyone can offer any suggestions on how to make textures in that style.

For reference: Kinda Blurry, from Perfect Dark, from Goldeneye

You mean that 3Dfx look? ;)
Thats 64x64 or 128x128 textures blurred when they are near the view, at least thats what they seem to me.
You can get that in modern games too if you set the texture reolution to low/very low.

Wikipedia says
Graphically, results of the Nintendo cartridge system were mixed. The N64's graphics chip was capable of trilinear filtering, which allowed textures to look very smooth compared to the Saturn or the PlayStation. This was due to latter two using nearest-neighbor interpolation, resulting in textures that were pixelated.

However, the smaller storage size of ROM cartridges limited the number of available textures, resulting in games that had blurry graphics. This was caused by the liberal use of stretched, low-resolution textures, and was compounded by the N64's 4096-byte limit on a single texture. Some games, such as Super Mario 64, use a large amount of Gouraud shading or very simple textures to produce a cartoon-like image. This fit the themes of many games, and allowed this style of imagery a sharp look. Cartridges for some later games, such as Resident Evil 2 and Sin & Punishment: Successor of the Earth, featured more ROM space, allowing for more detailed graphics.

As for making pictures and textures blurry, mess around with a picture editing site like Lunapic or Picnik. You can mess around with how the colors are and you can blur the picture to look N64-ish (Lunapic has a better blurring feature IMO).

Bastet Furry said:

You mean that 3Dfx look? ;)
Thats 64x64 or 128x128 textures blurred when they are near the view, at least thats what they seem to me.
You can get that in modern games too if you set the texture reolution to low/very low.

You won't find a 64x64 color texture in GoldenEye or Perfect Dark, and that's the max size a grayscale texture can be in those games. Colored textures are restricted to an 8-bit palette, and are usually 32x32, 32x64, or 64x32, with a few odder sizes like 32x48 mixed in.

Patrick: In order to match the look of GE or PD, I would take textures at those sizes and scale them to double their size at least. A lot of wall "textures" in those games were made from two or more smaller textures stacked on top of each other. The Archives are a good example of that; the green lower wall is 32x32 and gray upper is 64x32. Doom's patches would be a good way to replicate that.

(That Perfect Dark shot you posted is filtered to death. It would never look like that on the actual hardware; the N64's filtering was more subtle than that. The GoldenEye shot is a lot better reference point to how it should look.)

This mod is intended to use GZDoom's hardware rendering, so users with texture filtering might be closer. Maybe I didnt understand right, but should I make 64x64 textures and stretch them?

Just use plain colored textures at very low resolutions, and suggest using really crappy video cards/settings.

The telltale sign of this bygone era is the Gouraud shading, rather than the blurry textures.

Use gradients and "indexed" textures using a completely inappropriate palette.

To imitate that kind of charm that the N64 graphics presented, you need only keep a few things in mind.

The N64 had about 4MB of RAM if I recall correctly, and definitely only allowed textures of 4KB to be loaded (which amounts to a 64x64 8bpp image). Since you're using GZDoom, if you'd like to truly imitate the development cycle of an N64 game to it's fullest and have a likewise result, you can construct composite textures with the TEXTURES lump and only use 64x64, 32x128, etc... patches. Then somehow force GZDoom's renderer to trilinear, perhaps through an ACS command (I know something like this existed in Skulltag to send a cmd/cvar to console, but I don't know if an analog exists in ZDoom).

Patrick said:

This mod is intended to use GZDoom's hardware rendering, so users with texture filtering might be closer. Maybe I didnt understand right, but should I make 64x64 textures and stretch them?

Pretty much. I don't know about other games, but due to the way GE and PD do their mipmapping, it's impossible for a colored texture to be 64x64; you'll want to keep them around 64x32/32x64 at max. Grayscale textures can be up to 64x64, since they're smaller data-wise. The thing you're definitely going for is stretching them to about twice their size, except for the smaller details like trim, which can be used at their original size.

Dragonsbrethren said:

Pretty much. I don't know about other games, but due to the way GE and PD do their mipmapping, it's impossible for a colored texture to be 64x64; you'll want to keep them around 64x32/32x64 at max. Grayscale textures can be up to 64x64, since they're smaller data-wise. The thing you're definitely going for is stretching them to about twice their size, except for the smaller details like trim, which can be used at their original size.

Actually with any mipmapping whatsoever, the original texture size is effectively halved to 2KB in most cases.

Another particular quirk of N64's filtering is that it isn't completely bilinear. Instead, it linearly interpolates the three nearest texels to produce the result pixels. This has a natural triangulation bias which is not noticeable in normal texture images but may be noticed in regular pattern images. for example, if I had a texture of an X, one line of the X would be much smoother than the other, which would have jagged edges.

Csonicgo, did you ever stop and think that maybe plastic isn't as good as you first suspected it to be?

He has a positive association with it because he lost his virginity to a girl made of plastic.