Does anybody know how to make a model look like it’s of the N64 era ( graphics wise) ?
Modeling with as little polygons as possible and with primitive shapes helps to make a ‘retro’ feel. In addition, you could disable mip-maps to make textures nice and pixellated, but that’s more PS1-era looking. N64 had interpolation on its textures.
and you could use low texture resolution, and also have deatails like the eyes and nose of a character only on the texture.
This is a style I’ve been trying to emulate as well. I made a kart racing game that’s supposed to emulate the feel of Diddy Kong Racing for the N64. If you want, you can check out a few screenshots of it on my blog to see if it’s what you’re going for.
Not to be repetitive or anything, but always think with primitive shapes. Cubes and hexagons are your best friends. 
If you looked at the environment I modeled for SawShark Beach, you can see that both the cave and the palm trees are built out of hexagons, and everything else is built from either a cube or a flat plane. Everything has a stylized angular look to it, and most models for the N64 were designed to complement this.
When it comes to texturing, I notice that a lot of the N64’s better looking games (notably those created by Rareware) use highly-detailed textures to compensate for the lack of geometry. (And yeah, that doesn’t mean high resolution. In fact, I think the texture sizes for the N64 were only around 32x32, but that’s just a guess.) Details like a character’s eyes and clothes would normally be painted into the textures, and some backgrounds would just be flat planes painted with hyper-detailed artwork. Just look up a few screenshots of Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, or Conker for good references. :yes: Hope this helps, and good luck.
For starters, you should use few polygons and low-resolution textures.
The N64’s limited rendering power meant that the modelers had to make the most out of each triangle, so models were often modeled triangle by triangle, instead of with quads. This gives a slightly different look to low-poly models. Also, due to the N64’s limited power, smooth skinning was often an impossibility. Characters were almost always built out of separate segments that rotated independently, to simulate skinning. For example, the upper arm would be it’s own independent model, the lower arm would be as well, and so would the hand. Let me add that these segments were fully closed(had no holes at the ends),so no gaps would appear during animation.
One last thing to note, is that textures typically used a 16-color palette to save on size. You can simulate this with palettized PNG images.
If you want to be authentic, then you should use Nendo. Then you will understand the limitations they had to deal with back then.
If you can not find a licence for Nendo, there is an application called Wings 3D that is a carbon copy of Nendo.
Some other interesting trivia:
Reality Co-Processor @ 62.5 MHz
640 × 480
16.8 million color palette
4:3 aspect ratio.
Uh, are you sure that you linked to the right site? It doesn’t seem to be anything about 3D.
Imposters!
lol, here is the right link, sorry about that. I thought there was only 1 Nendo, I was wrong 
http://www.izware.com/nendo/index.htm
Lots of developers used Nendo for their N-64 titles.
Nendo is more for nostalgia than an aid to making out dated graphics. You are right, he can use any application for that.
If he wants to draw something out triangle by triangle he can use an advanced modeler like Zbrush, Silo or Modo. Or something primitive, like Zmodeler, or Milkshape -=Shiver=-.
I was just assuming he wanted to see what it was like for the old-school developers.
So I suggested Nendo because that would give him the most authentic feel for what was going on there. There is a very good reason that they stuck with simple primitives rather than modeling out nice shapes. (50% clunky application, and 50% “programmer art”. Is what I assume.) He can see what the old developers saw when they first noticed Mario looking back at them.
I never want to use it again. Especially with all the neat new toys blender has to offer.
Very interesting, what you posted about Nendo. That does explain the large amount of poorly constructed models that look like they were made by extruding basic shapes(although plenty of developers took the time to carefully construct their models out of triangles, as I mentioned before).
I own a N64DD, a failed add-on to the N64 never released outside of Japan, and there’s a game for it called “Mario Artist: Polygon Studio”. It has a rather basic 3D modeler that seems very much like Nendo. You place basic shapes, then extrude, bevel, and collapse edges to form models. All shapes MUST be closed- you cannot make holes in them and you cannot add single polygons. I’ve heard the modeler in that game is nearly identical to what Nintendo used to make models for Super Mario 64, so I would guess that it’s pretty much Nendo adapted into game form.
And I’m going to stress once more: N64 games never animated their models through deformation, it was always different segments moving independently. It gave the models a rather chunky look. You can simulate this by using an armature as usual, but making the models out of different shapes and attaching each segment to only one bone.
(although plenty of developers took the time to carefully construct their models out of triangles, as I mentioned before).
How do you do this with Nendo?
“Mario Artist: Polygon Studio”
Hirofumi Matsuoka was one of the founders of IzWare, who make Nendo and Miari. If I am not mistaken also did Samus design for Metroid.
And I’m going to stress once more: N64 games never animated their models through deformation
You need to go and watch some"Golden eye" and “Gex” videos.
This once again is lack of artistic skill. It is the same reason why modern games like Minecraft and Ace of Spades looks so terrible.
Nothing to do with the tools they used to create it, they just are not very good animators.
How do you do this with Nendo?
They probably didn’t use Nendo.
Nothing to do with the tools they used to create it, they just are not very good animators.
I would say it has a lot to do with the tools. I believe the default microcode provided by Nintendo for the N64’s gpu didn’t provide good support for smooth deformation(there was no way to apply separate rotation matrices to individual vertices within one batch, from my understanding), so developers either had to implement it on the cpu(which is a programmer’s job, not an animator’s job), or write their own microcode.