A talented modder has spent over a year turning The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s pre-rendered backgrounds into fully 3D assets, giving players a whole new perspective on some of the game’s areas.
Spanish 3D artist Reonu shared a demo of the work-in-progress project on BlueSky, showing how areas in Castle Town – including the entrance, market, back alley, and Temple of Time – appear with a freely movable camera and first-person view.
To achieve this, Reonu recreated all of the static backdrops as full 3D models, in a project called OoT unJPEG.
“I’m remaking all of Ocarina of Time’s prerenders in 3D, trying to match the N64 style rather than the 3DS one,” Reonu said.
The finished version will run on original Nintendo 64 hardware. It will also be released as a mod for Zelda 64 Recompiled, a fanmade PC port of Ocarina of Time (and its direct sequel, Majora’s Mask).
“I’m recreating all the prerenders using Blender and Fast64,” Reonu explained. “For the market I combined all of it into a single scene, which eliminates all the load screens and makes it seamless.
“Making this work on N64 hardware with okay performance was very hard and required me to write custom CPU culling code.”
The conversion also removed load screens throughout the market area, making navigation more seamless than in the original. It was also confirmed that no generative AI was used in the process of making the project.
Reonu also announced they are looking for 2D texture artists to help with the project, and invited those with the required skills to get in touch.
The upcoming remake of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
An official remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo Switch 2 is currently in development by Nintendo, which is slated for a 2026 release. The fandom community recently speculated that it may release on November 12th, 2026, based on recent amiibo listings.
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Written by Reece Heather
A veteran Zelda Universe editor and First-class journalism graduate, Reece emerged with a Nintendo 64 and a lifelong obsession after a narrow escape from Santa’s Naughty List in 1998. Outside of games, he’s reading Punisher comics, being bossed around by his cocker spaniel, and cornering innocent bystanders to rant about the importance of game preservation.
