They didn’t have to with a smooth normals shader. It’s basically free on the GPU. You can even try this on Blender, and any particularly blocky model will look unusually smooth at certain angles.
We are talking about the N64… Was a ‘smooth normals shader’ a thing it could do?
I know the N64 was a very unusual machine that took developers a little while to learn to manipulate to its full extent; but I’m not all that versed in the details.
ModernVintageGamer has some decent videos on it if I remember right. (it’s been a while)
I wonder if they had to reduce/save polygons in other places just to make these happen…
They didn’t have to with a smooth normals shader. It’s basically free on the GPU. You can even try this on Blender, and any particularly blocky model will look unusually smooth at certain angles.
We are talking about the N64… Was a ‘smooth normals shader’ a thing it could do?
I know the N64 was a very unusual machine that took developers a little while to learn to manipulate to its full extent; but I’m not all that versed in the details.
ModernVintageGamer has some decent videos on it if I remember right. (it’s been a while)
https://youtu.be/gRslfM-MOOw
Yes, I found that they used a technique called Gourard shading that uses smooth normals under the hood.
Image source
Nice! Easily my favorite console.
I recommend watching some Kaze Emanuar videos as well to see what the N64 hardware is capable of