So After this little thread: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=102634 i felt like the opinion was more yay than nay. it seamed people are (just like me) highly interested in "how" wind waker was made.

so here are my findings:

there are 4420 unique textures that i encountered in my (what i believe to be a) 100% play-through:




i could not bring myself to upload the textures to my webspace and take that level of responsibility but saw "someone" has them available right here:

http://minus.com/mjCoPOaox/

other stuff i found noteworthy:























now while posting this i realize for the first time that the "second/ugly" kind of alpha material probably saves massively on overdraw.







hope you enjoy.

Awesome thread Warby. Gonna take some time to read thru after work.

Just an FYI: Feet dynamically adjusting to the floor has been around for a very long time. Early examples include Jurrassic Park Tresspasser, Heretic 2 or Looking Glass's Terra Nova.

Nice breakdown, I had fun trying to recreate the waterfall shader, more windwaker talk here http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=98578

yeah i read that thread with glee =) i have a slight problem with the top corner of your water fall though ill explain in your thread.

I know the water fall should have separate planes for the textures and needs the top corner needs another animated spike texture, I'd do it differently if I did it again.

This is a fantastic breakdown Warby, great work.

A very interesting read indeed!

Warby, I love you!

About this:
You can see in some places bits where it overlaps the other parts of the environment (i.e. tree stumps)

I would not be surprised if this was just additive blend polygons built on the CPU and drawn directly on the scene once all the solid surfaces have been drawn. The lack of depth testing shows that they were concerned about these polygons clipping into ramps/etc. and they're able to reject the light pools early to stop them showing through walls.

That's great dude, I enjoy seeing breakdowns like this, reminds me of my modding days and turning on "r_showtris" for the first time lol.

Feet IK'ing dynamically to the ground has been around for years man, even n64 had that.

keep it up man, its cool lol

This is amazing. Love to see this kind of thing. Looks like there was a lot going on behind the scenes in Wind Waker than I had originally thought.

wow! This is great Thanks for posting!

@james wild yes i also noticed how they sometimes bleed over the corner of a wall or a column i assumed that was an intentional fx kinda like CELSHADING bloom . but your reasoning sounds more likely ! the little tree remains in the bottom right clearly shows that it doesnt draw "behind stuff" on this image however they do get blocked by the torchstands:



making me believe that there is actually a tech difference between the small and the large ones ...

Holy shit! warby you killed this! Absolutely great thread. Bookmarked! Printed! Tattooed on my chest!

You picked a great game to breakdown. It looks uber simple to people but there is so much going on behind the scenes. Showing this to beginners to going to really help people get a handle on how games are done.

Originally Posted by warby

making me believe that there is actually a tech difference between the small and the large ones ...

I'd imagine that the smaller ones, being so large in number, do a search for the nearest static polygon, and then if that point has line of sight with the camera, draws. This would not work with the larger sources as they're big enough that you'd notice the light pop into sight as you walked into the room. The larger sources, being mostly static, are probably just animated models with some code to change the lighting of any dynamic that walks into it.

great breakdown of wind waker. really interesting stuff! thanks!

Originally Posted by JamesWild

I'd imagine that the smaller ones, being so large in number, do a search for the nearest static polygon, and then if that point has line of sight with the camera, draws. This would not work with the larger sources as they're big enough that you'd notice the light pop into sight as you walked into the room. The larger sources, being mostly static, are probably just animated models with some code to change the lighting of any dynamic that walks into it.

wouldnt that require a raycast per lightsource? that sounds mighty expansive or can this kind of stuff get extracted from the zbuffer (probably with a frame delay)

This thread is awesome, I'd love to see similar sort of threads for other games

excellent, super useful analysis on a memorable favorite - Thanks!

Originally Posted by warby

wouldnt that require a raycast per lightsource? that sounds mighty expansive or can this kind of stuff get extracted from the zbuffer (probably with a frame delay)

If the basic scene polygons are separated out and optimized well (using a BSP or something though given the above pots-through-walls that's unlikely) it might be very, very cheap.

Freaking amazing!

also I recall feet IKing in the windmill in OoT, (i dont recall if its on stairs/uneven ground too though)

Cool read. Every now and then I fire up Wind Waker and just go sailing for a bit. That game was so good--maybe too good.

Great write-up, thanks for taking the time

a friend from mapcore "redyager" just let me know that its apparently possible to import windwaker models into mario galaxy 2 and use that as a model viewer somehow thought you might find these different perspectives interesting too:

SMG2 Hacking - Importing models from The Wind...

i assume this means that they use the same engine ...

Awesome!