It's absolutely fascinating stuff. Someone oughta send him over this way, maybe he'd be interested in getting the old girl back in the races, so to speak. Would be a good model swap for Amy.
As someone completely unfamiliar with how the Saturn's 3D rendering works, the fact that textures must be mapped to the whole polygon makes the strange, overly detailed level geometry suddenly make a lot of sense. However, I find it a bit strange that they decided to prioritize high-resolution textures (and smaller polygons) over a larger draw distance. Cool stuff, though.
IIRC this is a different issue - neither the Saturn nor the PlayStation offer perspective correction with textures, so when textures are rendered at oblique angles, things look horrible. It's less common on the Saturn because there are fewer 3D games out there (and it uses quads instead of triangles), but it's rife on the PlayStation. See: any of the early Tomb Raiders. The way to (partially) get around this is to render more polygons. A dozen smaller textures stitched together masks the problem better than a really large one. The Nintendo 64 doesn't have this issue, which is why Super Mario 64 can get away with exceedingly basic geometry.
Dear goodness... Why couldn't they keep the prototype models on the final game? Or hide them in the game files so modders could bring them up. They look more faithful to their original designs than the final models...
Yeah, texture mishaps aside, Tails' early model actually looks like Tails. Metal Sonic's has some light shine applied that makes all the difference. And whoever originally modeled Eggman actually took into account his yellow cape being attached to the 'walrus teeth' in the front! I can understand why someone unfamiliar with him would think there was a color error and changed it for the final. That saw on Amy's car is amusing; good to see the team had considered more offense for her originally versus what we got in the final. Never understood that Tails Doll creepypasta bullshit personally. Nice to see Jon having fun with the fans, at any rate.
So those are the models they used for all the "Thanks for Playing" screens and promotional stuff. They look sooooooooooo much better! I really wish they could have used them. What we ended up with were a bunch of derpy looking characters that all look like they had strokes.
It's too bad Jon can't release those models due to contractual issues. That Sonic Team... Those models could make Sonic R become a better game, like an Ultimate Version of it.
Just wow. Yeah the prototype models are all legitimately great. Opposite for the final ones, never realised such a vast negative difference would have been made.
Like what happened to the textures? It's like they took the original textures and distorted and edited them in MS paint. Like look at Metal Sonic's eyes there, they actually make sense in the prototype. The final they're really distorted and wrong. I get that they were trying to save polygons for the Saturn version but ekkk. And you'd think they'd be able to use the better models for the PC version or something but instead we're just left with even further distorted models/textures.
If I had to guess, and I'm glad I don't have to, I'd say that maybe Metal Sonic's eyes are like that because... you're more likely to see the character from the side than from the front? ... Mind you they're already using lower polygon models in those early prototypes posted a few months ago, and that was when only Sonic was floating around the course, so this must have been a very early change. I do wonder if they were just intended for renders.
They might even have been provided by Sonic Team itself for the sake of replicating them for the game, given the quality of the models. Heck, even EggRobo's head was an asset detached from the body, making it possible to rotate, something the final model is incapable of. If only Jon's team could have hidden those models in the game's files for folks here to find them later on... It's a kinda saddening reveal.
Damn. I've always hated the Sonic R models, but if they had looked more like these proto models, I may have actually appreciated them. It's like they went out of their way to make the final models as derpy-looking as possible. I understand lowering the poly count, but why did they have to botch the eyes so badly? Was is a protest on the modelers' part? Maybe they intentionally made them look so bad in order to convince the rest of the team to allow them to keep the higher poly models, but the plan backfired and we ended up stuck with these abominations Edit: Also, does anyone else feel that proto Metal Knuckles' textures make his "dreadlocks" look somewhat reminiscent of a Pharaoh's headdress? This goes with Regal Ruin, which had an ancient Egypt vibe, with pyramids and sphinxes, and was seemingly related to Knuckles' people, given that said sphinxes had echidna heads. Makes me wonder if Knuckles' ancestors were thought of as being Egyptian-like (perhaps due to Sandopolis' presence in Angel Island), before Sonic Adventure established that they were Mayan-like.
Those stripes on his dreadlocks might have been errors in the program Jon was using actually. There are other instances of similar errors on different models. But I'd believe it regardless. They definitely gave the echidnas more of an egyptian background prior to the mayan one.
Are the Saturn and PC models actually the same? I grew up with the PC version and have skates thought that Knuckles looked much worse, especially in regards to his spikes, on the Saturn version. His shoes are wrong in both versions though. EDIT: Yep, they are very different. Tails even has his hair and whiskers on PC. The PC models aren't identical to, but are very similar to the prototype. http://youtu.be/aNIb_JuyN7c This video doesn't show it, but I'm pretty sure that Metal Sonic still looks derpy on PC.
The extra stripes on Metal Knuckles' dreadlocks are definitely misapplied textures. The chest emblem repeats too...: ...but what's interesting is that the shape of it matches up with his character select icon art and the official renders. It was never supposed to be a crescent moon, like Knuckles has, but more this kind of a shape:
In this thread @Andrew75 was so kind to start in my stead (before I became a member here), there's been talking about the different Saturn Models, Sonic R's included. Compairing Saturn Sonic 3D models for a friend
