Recently I've seen a growing interest in replicating the look of 90's cgi, with people using an outdated blender version called 2.79, and others using the newer version called 4.5

I mean, I can hear y'all say "isn't 4.5 objectively better?"

and yeah, it is. It has a bone layer system that's way superior to 2.79, it has geometry nodes to do cool stuff like procedural generation. Feature wise Blender 4.5 is absolutely better.

But it doesn't have phong shading, a shading method used in the 90's.

Phong shading is a technology that fakes specular detail by taking the geometry information and smoothing is out into a fake specular reflection.

normally this method works decently, but it isn't accurate to how actual specular detail works.

Blender 4.5 is great for realism, but not for 90's cgi. at all. You couldn't even replicate it in cycles if you tried.

Blender 2.79 uses a method of rendering called "blender render", which is...kind of a mix of cycles and eevee?

the short'n sweet of it is that it uses phong shading alongside realistic reflections from cycles to create a faster render, which isn't as realistic.

I know the 90's cgi look isn't for everybody, but there's a big niche of people that are trying to replicate this look on modern hardware and actively fail because this stuff isn't supported anymore.

and yeah, you could TECHNICALLY replicate the look in blender eevee, but not only do you sacrifice the reflections, but manipulating the specularity of a model creates problems. For example, when a character is under red light, you can barely see them because you changed the specularity of the model.

So clearly I have to make a choice that'll depends ultimately on wether or not I'm willing to learn an outdated program for the sake of accuracy.

honestly if somebody was able to import Blender Render in 4.5, we wouldn't have this issue at all.

Now, I ask you (and by you I mean the people into 3d at all), what would be your solution to this problem? How can we replicate the look of 90's cgi without loosing the commodities of modern software?

I'm not versed in shader programming enough to be like "Use shader nodes to replicate phong from the ground up" but I feel like it could be done--Similar to how people fake parallax mapping with nodes.

If I were aiming for it myself I'd do the modeling in 4.5 for the amenities, export to fbx or obj and import into 2.79 for the rendering if possible.

https://youtu.be/XQdIxkd54X4

I think this might be of help, he's got the blend file in the description. Seems super tedious, might be able to reference empties for light position rather than manually adjusting

both methods you've suggested could honestly work fine. Making the models in 4.5 and export them as obj on 2.79 would work fine, tho the only real issue there is learning the rigging system and shortcuts again. I've only just learned all the basics of rigging so I'd be shooting myself on the foot. (take note that I can't export the rig itself, it would just break)

the other method is technically tedious, and works decently, but to be fair it probably has the same level of headcramps the first method would give me.

but yeah I'll surely try them both. I'll also try using the normal nodes that come with blender 4.5, but changing parameters until I sort of get the result I need.

i can think of a few reasons why someone would use blender 2.79 over the latest version (aside from the ease to replicate the 90s looks):

> lower/more accessible system requirements*;

> some people like the old interface better**;

> they won't use and/or dislike the new/updated features***;

> some must-have addon was not updated to newer versions of blender for whatever reason;

and i bet i would find some more if i bothered to look it up. but they're keeping that version available along with the manuals for a reason.

*using older free software is cheaper than buying a dedicated graphics card or worse, a new machine.

**was blender plagued by the "we gotta plagiarize photoshop by making our icons bland ass monochrome shit when moving from PNG to vector instead of using proper vector art like inkscape did" disease that afflicts lots of modern creative software? even if it wasn't, i heard something about the interface being a reason why people like that version.

***what is the point of taking your time to download and install an update, specially if you happen to have slow/limited internet (yes, it still exist in 2025), if you have no interest in the new features or dislike the changes implemented? or worse yet, you updated, disliked what you saw, downdated, and then the features you disliked were never removed in the next updates.

I seriously agree with everything you're saying.

BECAUSE phong shading was made for pc's from the 90's, and because the solid view uses an even older shading method, the performance boost is INSANE. Like seriously, the rendering may be limited to the cpu's core power, but the viewport working experience is phenomenal! Not a single lag spike (unless we talk about ctrl+z, which is slower than new blender).

I gotta be honest, I've been using 2.79 more and more and I can tell you this:

1) Animation is way longer of a process because its less intuitive than new blender (for example the timeline and dope sheet are way harder to use, I'll need to get used to it)

2) modelling has become 10 times harder because it lacks the easy to use icons and keyboard controls.

if I were to do a project in 2.79 I would NEED to model the character in new blender and export them as obj or fbx, then do the rigging and animation in 2.79.

the good thing is that weight painting seems to MOSTLY work the same way, its just...as you could guess...less intuitive. you can't press a button to quickly switch to a smoothing brush, so I'll need to learn the shortcut keys for that (and everything else). Other than that I'd say rigging and animation in 2.79 is...not impossible.

some things clearly cannot be done otherwise, rigs do not work between 2.79 and 4.5, and I'm definitely gonna have nightmares not being able to create collections to organize objects, but overall I think it is possible after all.

I'm just wondering, what do you mean by 90s CGI? You mean like toy story?

it is a...broad concept.

think of toy story, shrek, scott cawthon's work (Fnaf, the desolate hope), and those weird renders with primitive geometry (spheres, cubes, checkered pavements with blue skies).

truly the 90's cgi concept is very broad in style, but all those renders and micro genres revolve around one thing, how the cgi was made back then.

computers were not powerful enough to produce life-like reflections and specular details, so they had to rely on tricks...case and point, the phong shader I've talked about.

phong shading is very interesting as a concept, it basically takes information from the light and the 3d mesh itself and FAKES the specular detail by "duplicating" the 3d model and multiplying the color of the lights.

yeah it sounds like gibberish but that's pretty much how it works. even the colors of a 3d model were not displayed with actual real world accuracy.

the point of 90's cgi and its appeal is that BECAUSE of its technical limitations it created a whole new genre of visual flare.

graphics that rely on phong shading look charming and very nostalgic, and if done properly could give off some truly creepy vibes.

Take Five Nights at Freddy's, which actively uses phong shading for all its models. It isn't real enough to be believable, but it is close enough to reality to be terrefyingly accurate. The true meaning of "Uncanny valley" (I'm talking about fnaf 1 to 6, the games made by the creator Scott Cawthon specifically).

the coolest thing about old cgi is that..because it doesn't follow the rules of realism, you can actively break them to make cool stylized stuff!

Cartoony gradient backgrounds, super sharp shadows that are unrealistic (a feature I'd like to have on new blender), truly customizable materials to do the wakiest designs on characters-

you have basically unlimited freedom of creativity, and thanks to how stupidly lightweight these engines are...the rendering times are FAST. LIKE VERY FAST.

all of this...I can only do in blender 2.79 because blender 4.5 removed the "Blender Internal" engine, which used all said features.

you can see my frustration now.

I get what you're saying because regardless of any developments made in 3D rendering, it is nice having access to deprecated stuff for the sake of doing pastiche art. People still take photos with fuji film cameras for the aesthetic, but unfortunately have to pay premium to get film for them now since there is almost no demand. Idk if there are any existing emulators that can run old 3D graphics engines or something, and it is uncertain if there are any computers with old operating systems installed that could run a working copy of some old CAD software that was laid to waste after a corporate acquisition in the 2000's or something idk.

Idk if there were any significant overhauls in Blender's development that yielded the older versions inaccessible, but I know Roosendal has an early working version of Blender in an old computer. I'd scour the Blender forums or something to see if there is anything of use.

Using old programs can be fun; wish I had time for it. There are a few good plugins and shader packs out there that can get modem Blender to replicate PS1 / 3D Movie Maker style output, but unless you've spent time with the originals, you might miss out on some of that intangible special sauce of the actual old tech.

I mainly use EEVEE for rendering while making the world color black and turning off shadows on the latest version of Blender. This one is for me, but I always use point lights for every object and capture the lighting manually. I also turn things low for the render settings and fiddling around with the color management can help a lot with the contrast. Blender always defaults to "Filmic" and if you compare that with the other settings, it looks more greyish and flat compare to the others, but it does make things accurate according to the model's textures so I only use color management as a final option if I'm going to make things look more 90s cg.

Realized this was an old thread that got necrobumped and I already responded to it, but here are some newish thoughts on the subject:

The aesthetics of early Blender aren't significantly different to the latest versions, definitely not to a point where one evokes a different era than the other.

Everything that Blender phases-out of its defaults is typically somewhere in the plugins and just needs to be enabled, or there's some community plugin that brings back whatever was depreciated.

I'd argue it's easier to get stuff like PS1/N64/web1.0 looking visuals on the latest versions of Blender because those plugins and filters keep getting better at replicating the look. It's like how VHS filters on video editing programs in the early 2010s were usually tacky and fake as hell despite being closer in time to when VHS was still widely used, compared to today where there are lots of really good plugins and filters that get all the minute details of distortion, color limitations and tracking issues.

have to admit, I agree on everything you said. the shaders and compositor filters have gotten incredibly good at replicating basically anything, including dithering. you could use those and already have a close to perfect representation of the look.

I guess true 90's accuracy will remain a dream in my closet tho, as I've moved on from this almost fixation of mine. I realize people find quality in realistic approaches, or completely stylized ones, for a piece of media, so I decided to stick with what's more popular.

You should try messing around with Bryce

I thought about it, actually! Bryce is generally really good as it is basically an old school engine, but the issue is that I'm not aiming at still frames, I'm aiming at full animated capabilities, as I am a 3d artist and cinematography enthusiast that makes animations first.

for anything else, bryce would be fine, but I'm aware it doesn't support any sort of character animation directly into it...so yeah.

It honestly perplexes me that Blender doesn't really have an out-of-the-box... thing that allows using Phong shading or even vertex shading in the program itself, and that I have to supposedly use something like Godot just to achieve that effect. I mean, I like Godot, but can't I just do the damn thing in Blender itself?

Really. Blender. Powerful, multi-hypenated Blender. Award-winning, realism-capturing, Used-in-Spider-Verse Blender. Capable of doing any style in the art spectrum. Incapable of doing old tech shit from the 1990's, or at least I have to wrangle a dozen nodes just to get a similar effect. Why not the real thing?

OP, how much python do you know? I'm very much convinced using creative amounts of python can make it possible to do what you want. Blender ships out with its own python interpreter on windows if you're on that.

That makes total sense! Rendering any animation in Bryce is a nightmare anyway because it renders each frame individually, it takes fooooooreeeevveerrr to get even a short video exported :(

yeah uh...none. thing is, i used to know a little bit of programming, but it's been 7 years since I've done anything.

If I ever do program, I do it in penguinmod, which is basically scratch xd