FrostbyteVT PSX Model Showcase

Low Poly Frost (May 2025) compared to Frost PSX (December 2025).

I've been enjoying Frost's streams for a while now, so when I was first learning Blender and on the lookout for existing reference sheets of characters I could model knowing the invitation for fanart was open, Frost was a perfect candidate for my second model ever. While I've gotten a lot of mileage out of Low Poly Frost for goofs, I knew I wanted to revisit the model every time I've opened Blender or Godot to make such goofs. Low Poly Frost has a Rigify skeleton I didn't really understand and all sorts of limitations due to inexperience. While I always say I have no idea what I'm doing, I really had no idea what I was doing.

And so I present Frost PSX, a fully new model with all sorts of features and technical considerations I just wasn't considering back in May.

New Frost PSX model shown with and without jacket and long hair.

Let's Get Technical

Specifications

• Triangle Count:
• Jacket and Long Hair: 782
• Jacket and Short Hair: 724
• No Jacket and Long Hair: 697
• No Jacket and Short Hair: 639
• Textures:
• Main Texture (Body, Clothing): 128px square
• Hair Texture (Hair, Tails): 128px square, includes four 64px square hair color variants
• Face Texture (Eyes, Mouth): 256px square, includes duplicates for technical considerations (see below)

Originally, I was aiming for 600 triangles, but after viewing PSX models for reference, I determined that a higher triangle count was well within hero model limits. Overall, I'm happy with the triangle counts I landed at, in particular: Jacket + Long Hair is less than 800 triangles, No Jacket + Long Hair is less than 700 triangles. Note that these counts are based on toggling certain geometry off or on in tandem, i.e. the jacket hides the arms and some of the torso, so the JacketOn torso geometry excludes those triangles, while the JacketOff torso geometry obviously does not include any of the jacket triangles. This does mean the full triangle count when all geometry is enabled is higher than the values above, but this model is intended to never have all geometry enabled at once (i.e. JacketOn and JacketOff geometry should never both be enabled at the same time).

Frost PSX wireframe (with jacket and long hair).

Frost PSX wireframe (with no jacket and short hair).

As for the textures, I've broken away from "street legal" PSX texturing a bit. Doubtful I could get this model running on actual hardware without reworking the textures down into at most a 256px square - which is possible, mind you (see below). However, I wanted to support various toggles with this model. Notably, Frost's hair color is canonically both white or black. I had originally set up a shader in Blender that allowed me to set Frost's hair to any arbitary color, but then I realized this shader would not translate to exported files, resulting in dividing the hair texture into four color variations.

And then there's the face textures. To support certain software and how it handles face animations, I've had to duplicate a large number of frames in the texture (I have considered potential workarounds to this, which I may implement in a later update). I also wanted to allow for additional expressions to be added later, so the face texture ended up as a 256px square on its own. I am okay with this - technical considerations for the actual use of this model override my desire for authenticity.

Combined textures, arranged to fit 256px square and scaled up 400%.

Toggles and Variations

You'll notice there's a lot of variants of eye shapes, irises, and mouth shapes (for both expressions and visemes). That's because I wanted to support a lot of variations and potential toggles with this new model. Low Poly Frost had a couple faces I could swap between, but Frost PSX can have properly animated expressions.

Frost PSX facial expresssions and toggles.

Frost PSX visemes (mouth shapes for speaking).

Animation Rig

Frost PSX features a custom rig I made from the ground up. I've been rolling my own rigs for some time now, wanting to break away from relying on everything Rigify was doing for me that I didn't understand at the time. This rig features a deformation skeleton, a forward kinematics skeleton, and an inverse kinematics skeleton, with control toggles to swap between FK and IK for each limb individually, as well as a toggle for the head to use FK or use the look-at target. Additionally, there's an extra control for iris offset, allowing fine tuning where the eyes are looking. In future updates, I plan to add more controls to change various facial features (eye shape, iris type, mouth shape, etc.).

Frost PSX animation rig and controls, also showing project layout and bone groups.

Frost PSX deformation skeleton.

So What's This For?

Frost PSX was a portfolio piece, but also I wanted to have a better model for making goofs for Frost and her community. I wanted something I could actually pose in Blender, something I could export for use in Godot, and something I could export for certain software which I'm being coy about for now. (Anyone familiar with said software may have figured out already.) All in all, I'm proud of this model. It's pretty great to see my latest work side by side with some of my earliest - that clarity of skill improvement is just something I'm not used to seeing. I'm excited to add a few more bells and whistles to this model for Blender, and I feel like I could actually create proper animations using this rig. I might just have to actually get back into Godot (which is how I fell into Blender to begin with) and make something fun with this.

Oh, And One More Thing

I may be playing coy, but I do want to show this off.

Frost PSX in motion, showing expressions, visemes, and eye movement.