Looking back, it's really weird that specific areas in OoT were pre-rendered

[Molten_]

Like, what was the point? Surely creating large pre-rendered textures for indoor environments and castle town took up more space than a 3D environment. Was it in competition with Sony and FFVII? Honestly it doesn't even look that good in-game, mostly because of how the textures were mapped to a cube which made certain parts look blurry. Just seems like a really weird use of resources.

The textures themselves look pretty alright divorced from the game, though.

 

[Lastdancer]

There is a lot more geometry going on in those images than what could be created in real-time on a nintendo64

 

[qrac]

I thought it looked great first time playing it. Still do.

 

[Molten_]

There is a lot more geometry going on in those images than what could be created in real-time on a nintendo64

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I'm sure the devs could have approximated the environments. Obviously a lot of detail would have been lost, but I think it would have worked a lot better because there wouldn't be any switching between art-styles. For example Majora's Mask has no pre-rendered environments (including indoors) and it looks fine.

 

[Mr. President]

Yes.
Majora's Mask and later OoT3D looked way better for replacing it.

 

[LinkStrikesBack]

Most likely the same reason anything was prerendered back then.

It let you do more on the limited hardware.
Castle town has lots of background characters, and I think more complicated geometry (at least in appearance) than the rest of the game.

Compare those buildings to hyrules castle

Or kakariko

 

[Mory Dunz]

I'm sure the devs could have approximated the environments. Obviously a lot of detail would have been lost, but I think it would have worked a lot better because there wouldn't be any switching between art-styles. For example Majora's Mask has no pre-rendered environments (including indoors) and it looks fine.

Click to shrink...

MM needed the expansion pack though

 

[massoluk]

It looked ok in when I played on CRT, I think

 

[Molten_]

Most likely the same reason anything was prerendered back then.

It let you do more on the limited hardware.
Castle town has lots of background characters, and I think more complicated geometry (at least in appearance) than the rest of the game.

Compare those buildings to hyrules castle


Or kakariko

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It's funny you mention Kakariko because I feel like it looks WAY better than Castle Town, by a considerable degree.

 

[dodo]

I think it's an artistic choice rather than a technical one. Kakariko village is in the game and features lots of NPCs and big structures, for example, but the prerendered backgrounds here allow them to do cool stuff like the approach to the Temple of Time, which was definitely imposing at the time.

I also say this because iirc an early beta screenshot exists of a 3D area that looks like castle town but i could be misremembering.

 

[LinkStrikesBack]

It's funny you mention Kakariko because I feel like it looks WAY better than Castle Town, by a considerable degree.

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That's down to preference, but absolutely everything in the town is either a cube or basic angled surface, which isn't the case for castle town, in addition to having far fewer NPC's on screen, and is why they went for a prerendered approach there.

 

[Andromeda]

Yes, I agree. I didn't like that much those areas. More details, maybe prettier, yes, but only a static camera and static scene. I much prefered the interactive real-time OOT areas that had more atmosphere with lighting and effects.

 

[Deleted member 426]

N64 wasn't powerful enough to create a bustling Chrono Trigger esque town square. If they'd wanted to properly render it they'd have had to chance the vibe of the town. Ultimately it was an artistic choice to have a single area in the game feel lively.

I think it worked out because wasn't it fixed in the remake?

 

[Datajoy]

Those images are all from the same area.

 

[lvl 99 Pixel]

its pretty much just Hyrule Market area and a few interiors? I thought it was very effective, especially Temple of Time when you emerge in the future.

 

[Axe]

The 64 definitely couldn't handle that in full 3D, and I guess they wanted Castle Town to look really dense and built up.

Not sure why some of the interiors were prerendered though, since a few of them are horribly basic.

 

[blitzblake]

What is that top screen running on?
A) attack button certainly wasn't red it was blue.
B) I have a suspicion that it's emulated and is rendering the interactable objects at a higher resolution making them "pop" from the background more that what is seen in the original.

 

[SirFritz]

I can't remember, is the first room of the game prerendered or just fixed camera?

 

[Deleted member 42484]

Pre-rendered environments literally blew me away in the 90s.

As a kid I thought those areas were the best looking in the entire game! So realistic! I think some of the Kakariko interiors were pre-rendered too, like Links tree-home he wakes up in.

 

[LinkStrikesBack]

What is that top screen running on?
A) attack button certainly wasn't red it was blue.
B) I have a suspicion that it's emulated and is rendering the interactable objects at a higher resolution making them "pop" from the background more that what is seen in the original.

Click to shrink...

Iirc master quest makes the buttons those colours.

Edit: as the post below it was actually probably the GameCube version of OOT that came with wind waker (which was the first place master quest was properly released), hence my confusion.

 

[Quacktion]

What is that top screen running on?
A) attack button certainly wasn't red it was blue.
B) I have a suspicion that it's emulated and is rendering the interactable objects at a higher resolution making them "pop" from the background more that what is seen in the original.

Click to shrink...

Gamecube port had these buttons change to correspond to the controller.

 

[dodo]

What is that top screen running on?
A) attack button certainly wasn't red it was blue.
B) I have a suspicion that it's emulated and is rendering the interactable objects at a higher resolution making them "pop" from the background more that what is seen in the original.

Click to shrink...

master quest

 

[Lynd]

Yeah I always liked them, especially the back ally. They still look alright on a CRT.

 

[Deleted member 2474]

bear in mind most people at the time were looking at castle town rendered on a CRT TV over composite video where you couldn't make out the flaws as easily

 

[woopWOOP]

I thought it looked neat. Sure, I noticed the small blur in town square even then, but those locations had different angles than the usual third person camera and the extra pre-rendered details looked good. That back alley still looks great.

In comparison I thought Kakiro felt pretty basic, all the houses were just blocks and there weren't any shadows. I actually would've liked if that was pre-rendered too, lol (tho it'd make the chicken collecting an absolute shitfest)

 

[boris_feinbrand]

People don't realize just how brutally restrictive the poly budget was on N64. They could've made the market place a real 3D space, but would have had to cut basically all of the NPCs. If you inspect the NPCs, you see just how freaking low poly they are.
I think it created some weird stylistic break, and one that was only reconciled in the 3DS remake, but the game was breaking so much new ground, there really was no established best practices for this sort of problem.

 

[Servbot24]

It was weird at the time too. Gets the job done though.

 

[Dmax3901]

An OoT remake in the vein of RE:Remake would be my holy grail.

 

[Acetown]

It would probably be impossible to create a city environment as lively as the Hyrule marketplace without resorting to pre-rendered environments.
Speaking of which, I was always fascinated by the earliest screenshots they released which showed they were experimenting with a fully three dimensional castle town. The scope looked impressive but there's nothing going on there save for a single NPC. It's rather eerie.

 

[Conkerkid11]

An OoT remake in the vein of RE:Remake would be my holy grail.

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Even better, we got OoT 3DS

 

[Anthony Hopkins]

I thought it looked great first time playing it. Still do.

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Same here.
Looks better then N64 level graphics.

 

[johan]

I was always in awa when I walked up to the Temple of Time

Keep in mind tho that this game was made for tiny crt screens, the prerendered stuff looks real good on that

 

[Heazy]

I'd love to see these textures through that deep learning software that I've seen FF7 make use of!

 

[Celine]

On CRT the prerendered backgrounds look fine (here pictures from OoT and RE2 on a CRT through a real N64):

Photos by Mega.

 

[Lastdancer]

I'm sure the devs could have approximated the environments. Obviously a lot of detail would have been lost, but I think it would have worked a lot better because there wouldn't be any switching between art-styles. For example Majora's Mask has no pre-rendered environments (including indoors) and it looks fine.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I agree. Maybe they just ended up creating those environments first and backed away from that approach as development progressed.

 

[blitzblake]

Iirc master quest makes the buttons those colours.

Edit: as the post below it was actually probably the GameCube version of OOT that came with wind waker (which was the first place master quest was properly released), hence my confusion.

Click to shrink...

Gamecube port had these buttons change to correspond to the controller.

Click to shrink...

master quest

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Ahhh right!

 

[404LinkNotFound]

Yeah, I agree. Maybe they just ended up creating those environments first and backed away from that approach as development progressed.

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They did actually ,early screenshots show that castletown was gonna be realtime at first
Edit:Oops ,i misread your comment. Ignore this post!

 

[D.Lo]

I assumed it was a budgeting, storage or time constraint reason. Like they rushed those last bits to make it out for Christmas.

They were very weak and took away the cinematic actual 3D feel the game had otherwise. Was dropping down a rung in tech to the fake 3D of FF7 etc.

 

[Spacejaws]

Mate I thought it looked great :/

 

[Mikebison]

Technical limitations, what are they?

 

[Hieroph]

Even better, we got OoT 3DS

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Even better, we got Twilight Princess

 

[ThreepQuest64]

On CRT the prerendered backgrounds look fine (here pictures from OoT and RE2 on a CRT through a real N64):

Photos by Mega.

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Wow, these look amazing! I should get a cheap CRT for my retro sessions. Emulation is still not on par with the real thing, and the games on my 55'' look like crap.

 

[LinkStrikesBack]

I assumed it was a budgeting, storage or time constraint reason. Like they rushed those last bits to make it out for Christmas.

They were very weak and took away the cinematic actual 3D feel the game had otherwise. Was dropping down a rung in tech to the fake 3D of FF7 etc.

Click to shrink...

You think the most detailed geometry area in the game was among those rushed in at the last moment?

 

[Mister X]

Indeed, the pre rendered backgrounds never were of the quality of some of the PS1 games like FF VIII, IX.

 

[MonsterJail]

Anyone put the static OOT backgrounds through one of those fancy neural network image upscaler things yet?

 

[scare_crow]

I thought they looked pretty damn cool back in the day.

 

[Frodo]

If I remember correctly they wanted Hyrule Marked to be busy with people, and originally it was meant to be fully 3D, but they ran out of time, party because of the amount of effort needed to do it on that hardware.

 

[dock]

One really important thing to consider is how pre-rendered environments needed very little QA and code support. The interiors can be edited and rearranged plenty without breaking anything, and the memory footprint is completely rigid.

Not every artist was equipped for building environments, and they would have let the devs focus on the areas that needed to work.

 

[D.Lo]

You think the most detailed geometry area in the game was among those rushed in at the last moment?

Click to shrink...

Which area? You mean the geometry of the flat pre-rendered backgrounds? In game there is essentially no environmental geometry because it's just a jpg.

Yes, I assumed they ran out of time to properly model the market area/ruined market/inside kokiri houses/Temple of Time scenes etc to N64 spec, so spruced up some test environments, took some screenshots and whipped them up as pre-rendered scenes. As whole most of them would have been QA intensive scenes in real 3D, but are low tech when pre-rendered and likely saved development time.

 

[Jroc]

I think it was a combination of wanting to have a dense, detailed town, and wanting to have a bunch of NPCs on screen at once.