nkanaev / tipsy

tiny playstationy renderer

tipsy

tipsy (tiny playstationy) is a PS1-like software renderer written in ~500 lines of C99.
Features all the charm of the original PS1, like:

• low resolution display (320x240)
• no texture filtering (pixelated textures)
• affine texture mapping (warped textures)
• no anti-aliasing (chunky edges)
• lack of subpixel rasterization (polygon jittering/wobble)
• old shading techniques (flat & Gouraud)

demo.mp4

Models, for educational purposes, can be found here: https://www.models-resource.com/playstation/

building

Building requires C99 compiler & OpenGL. Supported platforms & building prerequisites are provided below:

• Linux

  # ubuntu 22.04
  sudo apt install -y build-essential libglu1-mesa-dev
  
  # fedora 37
  sudo dnf install -y gcc mesa-libGLU-devel
  

• MacOS

  Install Xcode. MacOS Monterey ships with (now deprecated) OpenGL by default.

• Windows (untested)

Get the source & run:

make

usage

./tipsy path/to/wavefront.obj

Hold down the left mouse button and drag to rotate.

Keybindings:

• Left/Right: rotate horizontally
• Up/Down: rotate vertically
• W: toggle wireframe drawing
• Z: toggle z-buffering
• P: toggle perspective correct texture mapping (default = off)
• C: toggle back/front face culling (default = back)
• J: toggle jittering (default = on)
• F: toggle vertical flip
• R: reset model position
• 1: switch off shading (default)
• 2: switch to flat shading
• 3: switch to gouraud shading

credits

• Building a PS1 style retro 3D renderer article by David Colson.
  Polygon jittering imitation technique was taken from there.
• Playstation Architecture article by Rodrigo Copetti.
  Provides a good overview of the PSX architecture.
• gel by Gustav Louw. Similar project with the same spirit.
• tigr by Erik Agsjö. The graphics library the project relies on.