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Learn how to make PSX retro graphics in houdini
10 students

Learn how to make PSX retro graphics in houdini

Playstation style graphics with modern day ease
Created byJulian roca
Last updated 10/2025
English

What you'll learn

  • Learn how to make pixel art from 3d models
  • Learn how to make PSX style backgrounds using texture atlases
  • Make our tools from scratch
  • Build a reliable pipeline to generate assets

Course content

3 sections22 lectures3h 41m total length
  • Introduction4:26

    Welcome to the course! Here we'll go over some technical details regarding sprites.

  • Sprites7:10

    Mapping 3d into a 2d grid

  • Sprite Lighting12:26

    We'll learn to light pixels to add depth to the final sprite

  • Quick sculpt6:35

    Quick timelapse of a mesh for spriting

  • Model preview3:25

    We preview our model as a 2d sprite

  • Setting up the data5:56

    We'll do some data setup for the exporting process

  • Exporting the data21:25

    We'll write the python code to export our sprite sheet as a png with transparency

  • Rigging our model9:59

    We'll add a quick rig to our mesh to export animated sprites

  • Exporting animations5:37

    We'll complete our code to export sprite sheets

  • Sprites Done1:55

    We're done with sprites, lets take a look back!

Requirements

  • Basic familiarity with houdini

Description

Have you ever wanted to make graphics similar to the gems of the golden age of JRPGs such as Final Fantasy Tactics, Breath of Fire 4 and Vagrant Story? 

We all know the "feel" but it is hard to replicate, a lot of the time the methods used to generate pixel art graphics from 3d models suffer from inaccuracies such as filtering in the textures and lack of control over lights and the inability to have a stable and reliable pipeline from 3D to 2D.

In this course we'll develop a workflow that'll make this a lot easier! Both for sprite sheets from 3d models as well as 3d backgrounds.

We'll build and use a single click export tool that will allow us to model, animate and then quickly save as a transparent PNG sprite sheet all our models with their various rotated views, this is exactly the same workflow as used in games such as Super Mario R.P.G for the SNES to generate appealing sprites that are consistent across the board.

Then we'll make an environment that uses vertex colors to store its light information, and texture atlases to both reduce the texture count and ease our production workflow, just how they did it for games like FFT and Vagrant Story as well as countless other gems from that era.

Who this course is for:

  • Begginner to advanced houdini user or game developers