Geometry & Textures

There is no hard triangle limit besides what you can fit into 8MB of N64 RAM (approx. 524000) but your level can run slower if you approach a certain amount depending on if it's geometry (processed on GPU) or collision (processed on CPU).

• Geometry

  • This can be anywhere up to 20000 on emulator before slowing down.

  • Console recommendation is about 3000

    • Using Decomp and Rooms in Fast64, this can be arbitrarily high as long as each section of the level is around that count

• Collision

  • This is about 3000 triangles on both emulator and console

  • The game can slow down if the collision map is too dense at certain points

    • Make sure to spread out the collision mesh with larger triangles and simpler shapes.

N64 games have several texture pixel formats. The important ones for SM64 are as follows.

• RGBA16

  • Use any color the N64 can output

  • 32 x 64 maximum resolution

  • Pixels are either fully transparent or fully opaque

• CI4

  • 16 color limit using a palette

  • 64 x 64 maximum resolution

  • Pixels are either fully transparent or fully opaque

• IA8

  • 16 grayscale and transparency levels

  • 64 x 64 maximum resolution

• I4

  • 16 grayscale or transparency levels (not both)

  • 64 x 128 maximum resolution

• Add additional flair and color to your levels.

• Colors can be transparent, allowing for seamless texture transitions or geometry that fades out into nothingness.

• Binary

  • Export your level as FBX so that your tool can actually see vertex colors.

• Decomp

  • Set the material preset on a triangle to something with "Vertex Colored" in the name.

  • Fast64 requires two Face Corner layers in blender, named "Col" and "Alpha", as inputs to these materials.

  • For custom N64 materials, the vertex color is referred to as Shade Color in the combiner.