Creating the 80’s CGI Aesthetic with Blender

There’s something about early computer graphics, those glowing wire-frames, spinning chrome logos, and basic primitives with simple gradient textures that seems to really capture that time, I wasn’t there but it seems that way. The 1980s were the birth of CGI as we know it, yet the results looked very different from modern 3D/CGI. It was clunky, hypnotic, and alive with technical imperfection. A kind of hand-made digital feel.

We can replicate that look in Blender, but to do it right, you need to understand why those early renders looked that way in the first place and try to utilize the limitations early 3D artists were faced with.

How 1980’s CGI Was Made

In the early days, there were no real-time viewports. Everything was done with primitive software built for custom workstations like the Evans & Sutherland, Cray, or Silicon Graphics IRIS systems. Artists wrote code just to draw the cube we delete every new Blender project. The visuals we associate with the era came from physical and mathematical limitations that shaped the entire aesthetic.

Rendering a single frame could take hours or even days, so every decision mattered. Lighting was calculated with basic shading models not ray tracing. Phong, Gouraud, and occasionally flat shading and the output was often just vector data, not final renders. To get those images onto film, studios like MAGI and Information International Inc. used a film recorder, which was essentially a modified camera aimed directly at a CRT monitor.

They’d render each frame to the screen one by one, then photograph it using 35mm film, advancing the frame between exposures. Because CRTs flickered and weren’t perfectly stable, the process introduced imperfections like bloom and scan-line distortion. Similar to vinyl noise or lofi crackles in music of the time, they were unintended or even undesired artifacts that today we want to use intentionally.

Movies like Tron (1982) defied what was possible with computer graphics at the time and are responsible for giving us many of the techniques we still use today. Artists on early CGI productions weren’t only creative but also technical geniuses, coding many of the tools they needed from scratch.

Why do we like imperfection?

Early CGI wasn’t trying to look “real.” It was trying to look possible. The renderers were simple, but the artists were visionary. That’s why those wire-frames and metallic gradients have aged better than some of the more photo-realistic CGI of the early 2000s. They sit comfortably in the uncanny valley, half visual masterpiece and half digital fever dream.

A lot of the charm for me comes from the fact that they had to overcome so many obstacles to create something that many people at the time didn’t even see the point in or even heavily criticized. Tiny timing errors, slightly blown-out whites, and saturated phosphor glow, things that would halt any modern productions made it to the big screen. They didn’t let perfection stop them from creating something great. They embraced limitations and even defied them. When recreated digitally, it may not have the same exact feel but we can definitely get pretty close with a few Blender tricks and some old gear you may even have laying around your house.

Tips for Recreating 1980s CGI in Blender

Here’s some of the techniques I use to recreate the 80’s or 90’s CGI feel. This process can be a lot of fun and very creative. There’s really no right or wrong way to create “low quality” renders, so I think experimenting is the way to go.

1. Use Simple Materials

Stick with Emission, Diffuse, and Glossy BSDFs. Avoid texture maps, roughness layers, or HDRIs. Materials in the ‘80s were algorithmic: pure math and reflection. Try the toon or fresnel-only look. Even a bright green wire frame over black will sell the vibe.

Use the Shader to RGB node in Eevee to flatten your materials into old-school, baked color gradients.

2. Light Like a CRT

Use a black world or simple gradient background and one or two colored rim lights — neon magenta, electric blue, or green. Fake the soft bloom of CRT phosphors by adding a Bloom node to the compositor. Add lens distortion and add a faint vertical streak with the Glare node.

3. Add Film Recording Imperfections

Add scan lines, chromatic aberration, and a touch of glow bleed. You can composite a subtle noise texture that scrolls vertically to emulate CRT refresh. For realism, lower your frame rate to 24fps and introduce slight exposure flicker using key frames on the color or emission strength.

4. Render in Low Resolution, Then Upscale

Most early CGI was rendered at 512×486 or 640×480, then transferred to film or video. Render small, then upscale with a bit of Gaussian blur and sharpen. Don’t use AI upscalers — you want the chunky pixels. Add a soft vignette or an overlay (such as the ones on my shop page) to simulate film scanning.

5. Use Primitive Geometry

Avoid high-poly meshes. Stick with spheres, cubes, and grids, but move them elegantly. Smooth rotations, slow pans, easing curves. Early animators didn’t have particle systems or simulations, motion was hand-crafted.

6. Recording To VHS

It’s not the same as recording to 35mm film like the OG’s did but in combination with these tips inside Blender, my favorite way to capture this look is by recording my renders onto VHS tape via an HDMI to AV RCA adapter and then recording the CRT screen directly while playing back the tape. This can be tricky considering flickering, adjusting shutter speed and CRT settings but can produce a very authentic looking result.

Here’s a short video I made describing my basic CRT setup: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/08bTgslx3

Next time you render a chrome logo spinning over a glowing grid, remember: someone once wrote 10,000 lines of code to make that single reflection appear. And they filmed it off a CRT, frame by frame, because that was the only way and they made it work.

-ShakeyCG