A Close Look at Mario Models Throughout the Years

[winstein]

I think that one of the advantages of having flat-coloured textures for Mario's Head, in Mario 64 and Mario Party 2's case, is the ability to stretch their faces without having distortions on the textures. It also makes them look surprisingly clean, which looked unusual coming from other Mario models. It didn't occur to me then, so it's nice to know.

It's weird to see Mario's legs stretched in one of the Luigi's Mansion model, but it would be a cool idea if Mario is playable and have to instead rescue Luigi from the painting.

It's a nice touch to have the Classic version of Super Smash Bros. Melee trophies based on the Super Smash Bros. 64's artwork. The surprising thing though, is how much more detailed the Classic versions are compared to the main model, though not entirely surprising since the trophies are pretty much viewed independently compared to the playable versions.

That Pikmin model of Mario looks very off-putting and weird, only because it shows Mario having brown eyebrows and moustache, which reminds me of the feeling when I seen how Butch Hartman drew Mario.

Thank you for reading.

 

[Ray Trace]

I think that one of the advantages of having flat-coloured textures for Mario's Head, in Mario 64 and Mario Party 2's case, is the ability to stretch their faces without having distortions on the textures. It also makes them look surprisingly clean, which looked unusual coming from other Mario models. It didn't occur to me then, so it's nice to know.

Actually, UV mapping is the key player to not making textures distorted when you map the textures on a model: when uv mapping a model, you usually do it in a checkerboard format for the character and you have to eliminate as much stretching as possible in the tiling displayed by the checkers. Plain colors can avoid the trouble of UV mapping altogether, if that's what you mean to say.

 

[LeftyGreenMario]

Super Mario Sunshine
I had no errors when putting it in the 3DS Max scene. One edit I made was detaching his shirt from his body just for accessibility reasons. The .dae file had issues importing the mesh, though the bones look intact. I had to import the .obj on top of it, but aligns nicely with the bones.

Mesh

Spoiler: More images

Tris:1,348
This one is a biggie because it's featured in a major, highly-anticipated sequel to the beloved Super Mario 64. For a game that's supposed to be "next-gen", the model is a little disappointing especially after the Luigi's Mansion one and the Melee one. The shirt itself adds a negligible 176 triangles, leading to a total of 1,524 polys, which is significantly less than the 5,256 tris of Luigi's Mansion's Mario. The glasses are weirdly missing so maybe you can tack on an extra one hundred or so. I suppose the quality of the model took a hit just so the developers can focus on the expansive worlds, which neither Luigi's Mansion nor Melee have, for the sake of a nice framerate. If you compare this model to the Luigi's Mansion model, you can see the quality difference: the legs, particularly around the joints including the knees and the hips, have less edge loops going on. The mouth has no geometry whatsoever, so it relies on the infamous texture stickers. The soles of his shoes look like hexagons. The mustache appears uneven if you pay attention to size near the tip compared to the base of the 'stache. I also find it peculiar that the eyebrows aren't modeled at all even though in later games, they're separately modeled and are often grouped with the mustache. The sideburns are not defined all that, so if the model is stripped from its textures, then the sideburns will look like little bumps on the model. The hands are simpler, though it's nice that their fingers are modeled separately. The way they're modeled, however, tells me that it's the first among a future trend that Mario's hands will be annoyingly replaced by other hands rather than being truly animated. This rip lacks those hands. It irks me as a future modeler (and interested in animation and rendering) because it limits my options if I don't resort to creating new bones and rigging. But christ, this model is hideous compared to the Luigi's Mansion one. I say it's low-end 3DS quality. On the final note, my favorite aspect of this model is the crotch spike; it must hurt to be ground-pounded by this Mario.

Anyhow, this is only the player model Mario. The cutscene models are far better than this one. Though I'm not sure if the cutscenes use pre-rendered movie format or are live rendered, though live-rendering is much more common in these games. If it's live-rendered, I'm hoping people can rip that one.

Textures

As far as textures go, the body texture is all right, being 256 x 256 (low, but standard for Gamecube I think), though I'm just not fond of how the clothes or hair are highlighted here. The overalls don't even that accurate. They're rounded here, but the in-game cutscenes and official art renders show that they're supposed to be pointed. That's a minor nitpick, though. I think the low contrast between the shadows and the highlights give the body texture a mushy appearance to it. Still, it's more complex than the monocolored textures like from trophy Melee Mario or virtually all N64 Marios. The overalls do seem to be lacking detail, but I think the way the model is unwrapped is partially to blame. Unlike the Melee Mario or Luigi's Mansion Mario, the ear is embedded in the body texture rather than being its own texture. The grayscale image seems to be a specular map or otherwise a mask of some sort. The color maps we've been looking at, the most obvious ones, are called diffuse maps and the texturing procedure overall is arguably more accurately called "diffuse mapping". A map (H_toon_2_4i.png, not shown here) also appears to be a cartoon shader, so there's maybe some cel shading going on? It might explain for the high-contrast shading I'm seeing in some images like this one from a cutscene and the shading I'm seeing here.

The eyes look pretty miserable though to be fair, you won't be seeing Mario's eyes as often as the back of his head. I suppose given system limitations, it's not important to make Mario have pretty eyes, but in the own eyes of a generation accustomed to nicer and nicer graphics, this didn't age well. But yeah, camera angles and animations play an important role when you're planning to model and texture characters. Heck, there are choices between several neutral poses and they all depend on how you want the characters to animate or trade-offs between rigging and say, clothes modeling. Anyhow, I think the low quality is deliberate. While the same resolution has Luigi's Mansion eyes, being 32 x 32, it must share this space with the eyebrows. The textures themselves appear to be heavily indexed or otherwise compressed. You can see the artifacts around the eyes that muddy the image. This texture looks particularly bad when it's stretched across the face and you can see all its glorious compressed muddiness in the renders I posted. A Supper Mario Broth post exemplifies the design of the model, how its' not intended to be viewed up close: you can see Mario's irises leaking into his face. This leaking is present in this model too, and it's entirely from the UV mapping.

Bones

For once, the model is in a nice .dae format so I can view the bone structure. The bones are the small diamond thingies that are linked by triangle things. The structure is basic, probably not a step above most models I've discussed here barring Melee's Mario and Luigi's Mansion Mario. You can see how the bones fall into place. The thing at the bottom is the root bone and it moves ALL the bones easily. The hip bone is where the legs and spines join and is generally the bone that can move everything else aside from the root bone. For someone who is accustomed to seeing toe bones, I find it curious that this model lacks toe bones. They help animate the toes which are crucial for walk cycles or tip-toeing. There are virtually no spine bones so this Mario probably never twists very well in-game. There is only a waist bone, which is right where the hip is, and there is a chest bone which is ALSO where the hip is. The arms have standard components consisting of clavicle, shoulder, upper arm, lower arm, hand, fingers. These bones lack fingers, which lead further credence to my guess that the hands are intended to be replaced, if they even "animate" at all in this game. It definitely saves animators some time, though, and they seem to like it, so we'll see the lack of finger bones in future 3D Mario games.

 

[winstein]

I understand the reason Mario's short-sleeved here, mainly due to the tropical weather, but are Mario's elbows basically located between the red shirt and the skin part of the model?

Looking at the Gamecube Mario models, what are the other models you're looking into next time? I think there are probably the following: Mario Kart, Mario Party, Mario Golf/Tennis, Mario Baseball, Mario Strikers, DDR Mario and probably the EA sport games with Mario in it. That is a lot more to cover, unless some of those games have the same model that it's no point covering them all

Thank you for reading.

 

[LeftyGreenMario]

Mario's elbows seem to be located right where the short sleeves end: you can see two vertical edges close together in the middle of the arm (visible in the back view of Mario) and looks a little pinched like the shirt is shrink-wrapping his arm: this is where the deformation of the lower arm takes place. They put two edges here so the deformation is nice (extra edges are kind of like an anchor to prevent unwanted vertices from farther away from moving). You don't need to give it a pinched appearance, though, that's just a design choice.

I'll probably look at whatever's available though I think at this period, repeats are being used. I will be looking at Mario Kart: Double Dash if I can find a way to get that model since I think it's worth examining though I also like to look at Mario Party GCN models and maybe Mario Power Tennis models. My biggest obstacle so far is ripping the things and I'm not super good at ripping and I'm not the one who can reverse engineer and write decompressing scripts. I WILL be looking at Mario Strikers INCLUDING the unused one.

 

[The Nate]

Is it possible you could examine renders like this one?

 

[Starlight24]

Sunshine Mario reminds me of Star Rush Mario.

 

[LeftyGreenMario]

Is it possible you could examine renders like this one?

I can't examine renders with the same amount of depth I can with models. Renders are 2D images translated from 3D, models are 3D. Technically, every image on here is a render. So for this, I'll have to make a few guesses here and there. Of course, the bigger the render, the better. I think I should also look at GROUPS of renders rather than one render, which will tell me a better picture of what's going on. I'm not sure what rendering software this uses: I remember one thread talking about silicon graphics and I don't know too well about it.

That being said, I do hope this Mario makes a reappearance one day, since he looks quite distinct from the current Mario. The closest thing we have is the Melee Mario. In fact, if you take Melee Mario and replace his textures with flat textures, you might get something similar.

Sunshine Mario reminds me of Star Rush Mario.

The quality is similar, no doubt, though even Star Rush Mario has less crappy eyes.

This is Island Tour Cloudy Mario and even though the eyes are pixelated, they don't look like the colors are bleeding like in Sunshine Mario's face. Yeah, it's pretty clear I'm not too fond of Sunshine Mario.