you will be happy to know pre rendered sprites are far from completely dead. in fact they are still heavily used in 3D games ! they are called orthogonal impostors, and they are made by pre rendering complex objects from multiple angles with some PBR textures to boot, by switching what angle is rendered they let you view the object from multiple perspectives and the inclusion of PBR maps lets developers shade these impostors as if they were fully 3D models. this lets developers entirely replace 3D models at a distance with low poly impostors for much higher performance. it is also used by animation studios to cut back on rendering costs. impostors are also heavily used in 2d mobile games too.
@@RetroDark_The_Wizard The Super Mario Maker games do that for the NSMBU style, as it makes it easier to switch between that and the other styles on the fly.
Scott is still heavily involved in the franchise's production and approved of the new look of the games. They even actually used the same exact sprites he rendered for the fnaf 1-6 in Help Wanted, the only change they made to the animatronics was retopologizing them.
Regarding the DKC Sprite renders, I recall reading somewhere that although the 3D models were in colour on the workstation, the final renders were in shades of grey. The Rare artists then manually re-assigned the correct colours for each shade back to each sprite afterwards. (Edit: This was, I believe, to match the desired shades with the SNES colour pallete, for which there was apparently no automatic process). For anyone interested in seeing the Donkey Kong character's 3D render in much higher detail, there's a magazine called _Super Gamer Presents The Complete Nintendo A-Z Of Games_ featuring a couple of nice official hi-res renders - One on the cover, and the other on a big double-page ad for the game as you turn open the cover. Further in the magazine, of course, there's a glowing review for the game itself. I just googled the magazine and discovered that it's is freely available to read on the Internet Archive. I still have a physical copy from when I bought it back in the day.
P.S. Just skimming through the other SNES reviews in the magazine for old time's sake. I totally forgot about Clayfighter. I never had the game but it was popular for a very brief while. I always assumed that it was pre-rendered 3D, but it was digitised images taken of real clay models.
I absolutely love this design style and wish we could see a bunch of games come out with this style & technique again. It shouldn't ever go away no matter how advanced we ever get, we should always make a certain amount of games like this.
Good to see someony finally addressing the graphical downgrades from X4 to X5 and X6. It baffles me how bad those games look when compared to their predecessor.
Yeah, in the script it was talking about "virtua fighter-like games" with the intention being that it was about 3d polygonal fighters on nintendo, but I didn't go in depth enough for that phrase to make any sense.
Fun fact, both Mario Kart 64 and Yoshi's story were mentioned in the script, I just cut them for time. I made this video in a day and was unable to get all the footage I needed
@@RetroDark_The_Wizard Yeah its pretty incredible how good it looks honestly, for a 50s vibe thing especially claymation has that david and the argonauts vibe. There is an impressive fan project to make 3d rendered "talking heads" for every NPC, but they actually do use 3d rendering but in the style of claymation so it fits together so your mistake is a common one, that kind of helped modders imitate the style
@@RetroDark_The_Wizard in all seriousness you deserve more subs. It’s weird seeing someone with video that look so professional and having 1/4 the subs they do. You are destined for great things.
It's absolutely disgusting that they forced people to render shit themselves! Corporate greed at its most depraved! Seriously though, cool video concept.
2:50 I hate it when people always talk about the SNES version of the Toy Story game. The Genesis version is MUCH better than that oversaturated mess and it came out (and was being developed) earlier.
you will be happy to know pre rendered sprites are far from completely dead. in fact they are still heavily used in 3D games ! they are called orthogonal impostors, and they are made by pre rendering complex objects from multiple angles with some PBR textures to boot, by switching what angle is rendered they let you view the object from multiple perspectives and the inclusion of PBR maps lets developers shade these impostors as if they were fully 3D models.
this lets developers entirely replace 3D models at a distance with low poly impostors for much higher performance. it is also used by animation studios to cut back on rendering costs.
impostors are also heavily used in 2d mobile games too.
Cool! Thanks for telling me.
@@RetroDark_The_Wizard The Super Mario Maker games do that for the NSMBU style, as it makes it easier to switch between that and the other styles on the fly.
I did find something referred to as "True Imposters" in GPU Gems 3. Thanks for sharing this, I had never heard of it before.
I like how we had computer draw sprites, Real life people and object pre-rendered sprites and pre-renderd 3d sprites
I absolutely loved this video and will absolutely binge your others right now
Thanks!
There are pre-rendered graphics in Sonic 1 as well. In the palm trees of Green Hill, in the bird or fish in the background of the Special Stage...
"I have to mention Fallout or my brother will k,ll me." Lmaoooo
Scott is still heavily involved in the franchise's production and approved of the new look of the games. They even actually used the same exact sprites he rendered for the fnaf 1-6 in Help Wanted, the only change they made to the animatronics was retopologizing them.
I know, it’s just not the same look in security breech. Scott may have approved it, but it’s just not the same.
I like them, they remind me of those super crusty sort of 3d models old personal websites had
I love that aesthetic
Sonic 3D Blast holds a special place in my heart, despite it's flack.
Regarding the DKC Sprite renders, I recall reading somewhere that although the 3D models were in colour on the workstation, the final renders were in shades of grey. The Rare artists then manually re-assigned the correct colours for each shade back to each sprite afterwards. (Edit: This was, I believe, to match the desired shades with the SNES colour pallete, for which there was apparently no automatic process).
For anyone interested in seeing the Donkey Kong character's 3D render in much higher detail, there's a magazine called _Super Gamer Presents The Complete Nintendo A-Z Of Games_ featuring a couple of nice official hi-res renders - One on the cover, and the other on a big double-page ad for the game as you turn open the cover. Further in the magazine, of course, there's a glowing review for the game itself.
I just googled the magazine and discovered that it's is freely available to read on the Internet Archive. I still have a physical copy from when I bought it back in the day.
P.S. Just skimming through the other SNES reviews in the magazine for old time's sake. I totally forgot about Clayfighter. I never had the game but it was popular for a very brief while.
I always assumed that it was pre-rendered 3D, but it was digitised images taken of real clay models.
While I don't really like this aesthetic, it is still pretty interesting to see how they made games like Donkey Kong Country look the way they do.
Shout out for mentioning the pre-rendered sprites in Mr. Bones and then completely skipping over the Resident Evil games and their iconic backgrounds
I have never played resident evil lol
I absolutely love this design style and wish we could see a bunch of games come out with this style & technique again. It shouldn't ever go away no matter how advanced we ever get, we should always make a certain amount of games like this.
Nice video! Cheers from the Netherlands
pretty cool stuff, this has a special look to it
Good to see someony finally addressing the graphical downgrades from X4 to X5 and X6. It baffles me how bad those games look when compared to their predecessor.
Nice video! Youre video editing skills are getting better!
Thanks man!
This was really interesting!
Thanks man!
366 Subscribers? Hope you reach 1K I will tell people abt this channel. Keep up the terrific work 👍
Thanks man!
nice vid,you should totally make one about game re-releases (smb deluxe, the nes series for gba etc)
I used to play 3D Blast a lot back then. Cool video.
Virtua Fighter came out a year before Killer Instinct
Yeah, in the script it was talking about "virtua fighter-like games" with the intention being that it was about 3d polygonal fighters on nintendo, but I didn't go in depth enough for that phrase to make any sense.
Shout out to Mario Kart 64.
And Yoshi's Story
Fun fact, both Mario Kart 64 and Yoshi's story were mentioned in the script, I just cut them for time. I made this video in a day and was unable to get all the footage I needed
Fallout 1 was actually hand made claymation believe it or not 5:20
Cool, similar to that one Sonic 3d blast box art
@@RetroDark_The_Wizard Yeah its pretty incredible how good it looks honestly, for a 50s vibe thing especially claymation has that david and the argonauts vibe. There is an impressive fan project to make 3d rendered "talking heads" for every NPC, but they actually do use 3d rendering but in the style of claymation so it fits together so your mistake is a common one, that kind of helped modders imitate the style
Great video
underrated vid tbh
0:03 the next two videos are what?
CGI and a review of a tv show called beast machines
@@RetroDark_The_Wizard in all seriousness you deserve more subs. It’s weird seeing someone with video that look so professional and having 1/4 the subs they do. You are destined for great things.
@@TheOnlyCrow. Thanks man
It's absolutely disgusting that they forced people to render shit themselves! Corporate greed at its most depraved! Seriously though, cool video concept.
2:50 I hate it when people always talk about the SNES version of the Toy Story game. The Genesis version is MUCH better than that oversaturated mess and it came out (and was being developed) earlier.
fair, i probably should have talked about the genesis version
Hey bro I'm a game designer too, wanna talk about pre rendered graphics?
Yeah we could
3:00 silicon graphics computers silicon graphics computers silicon graphics computers silicon graphics computers silicon graphics computers silicon graphics computers
wait, they're what?
dont like prerender.. it look very bad... well, maybe sonic 3d blast and toy story is exeption..
Fnaf is ugly as hell