Banjo & Kazooie - Low Poly (Evolution of Characters in Games) - Episode 8

in 1998 British studio rare introduced us to banjo kazooie a collectathon game on the n64 about a bird and bear duo trying to rescue banjo the Bears sister Tootie from the wicked witch gruntilda and thus beginning a franchise that fans still love to this day so much so that recently both Banjo and Kazooie were introduced into Super Smash Brothers ultimate something that fans have been clamoring for for years and now with this dream finally coming true I thought it would be a good idea to look back on the banjo kazooie franchise and check out all the models from each game hand although there aren't that many entries into this series we can still definitely chop the progression of each of the 3d models of both Banjo and Kazooie from each of the different games which are now on completely different platforms and also there's a fair chunk of time spaced out between each of the entries all culminating in Banjo and Kazooie being in Super Smash Brothers ultimate so what do you say we check out some of these 3d models this is low poly [Music] our first stop on this tour of 3d models is in a place that you maybe wouldn't expect you'd probably expect us to check out banjo kazooie in 1998 but banjo is actually in an earlier game also by rare the game in question is diddy kong racing and this marks the very first appearance of banjo unfortunately kazooie doesn't tag along because well she wasn't created yet but we do have banjo to take a look at now this is the full-body version of banjo when he's not sitting inside a vehicle this was a racing game and this is actually taken from the character select screen this version of banjo is 248 tries of low-poly banjo goodness as you might expect with a model like this a lot of the geometry is very very simple and the textures do a lot of the work detail wise some of the most obvious instances of the geometry being simple are the hands being just giant stumps basically the ears are simply triangles I got to give some extra points for the backpack flap try saying that three times being actually modeled and it's basically a triangle but that's extra detail they didn't have to put that in that could have easily have just been a texture and instead they decided to actually model that which gives the model some depth I'm really stretching on this one in terms of texture what it's again very simple a lot of the n64 kind of models did have these very simple textures nothing too crazy but it just gives enough that you know it's banjo it's mostly a lot of flat colors covering larger surfaces but there is some texture detail in the backpack and on his face with the eyes in the kind of mouth area and also that kind of signature necklace that banjo has always had oh we shouldn't forget the belt buckle which is also another key part of banjos character design going forward but overall this is a very simple model for a very simple game it didn't need to be anything crazy and this is about the only instance where you see banjo in a full body most of the time he's inside a vehicle and speaking of inside a vehicle here's another low poly model of banjo and it's probably the lowest poly model and this is something the normal player would never actually really see back in the n64 days CRTs were very blurry and you couldn't make out fine details and that's this model comes into play it's actually used when the camera is far enough away from the other players that you cannot see any detail hence why it is a literal triangle for tries of just pure low-poly amazement I guess hey at least it has a texture I mean that's more than you could ask for really but this model is really the epitome of using these kind of techniques to simulate an idea that character is far away in the background and really it's just this the things that developers had to do back in the day okay let's move on to the game that started it all banjo kazooie and let's take a look at the banjo model from that game first of all let's hit you with some stats this model is 704 tries and this is just banjo we'll take a look at kazooie by herself in just a second now the difference between Diddy Kong Racing banjo and banjo kazooie's banjo is pretty obvious right off the bat we already have way more geometry going on with the model to kind of detail out some of the more key areas like the face the eyes are actually modeled as are the ears they're no longer just triangles and even the hair is kind of more well built into the face I guess banjos mouth is no longer just the texture it's actually modeled and you can see inside it if you really want to go home banjos necklace is even modeled most of it is a texture like the string around his neck but the actual kind of I guess it's a shark tooth I'm not actually sure what it is but that's actually a 3d model things like the belt buckle are understandably just a 2d text to put on a plane because when you're playing n64 games you cannot see extreme detail and it makes sense to be a bit more resourceful however things like banjos actual backpack straps and models this time now not just a texture like they were in a Diddy Kong Racing model speaking of banjos backpack the backpack flap again is actually modeled this time but not just a triangle it actually has depth and kind of thickness to it even the fur around banjos ankles has geometry applied to it and it's not just the texture so we've obviously come a long way since the Diddy Kong Racing banjo model which is only about two years difference by this time developers were getting a lot more comfortable with the n64 hardware so it makes sense that there would be leaps one of the parts of the model I need to talk about is the hands now the hands in the main model actually have thumbs this time and they're not just a complete block although they are pretty blocky however there is one instance during the game in the intro where these hands are actually swapped out with hands that actually have fingers where banjo can play well the banjo now unfortunately I wasn't able to get this model from the game in one piece and so we'll just have to speculate here if I was to say that maybe each hand during this cutscene added an extra 15 to 20 tries there's probably about 40 extra tries in this model something around that number I'm not too sure the intro I cannot believe it would be that resource intensive so they can get a wave of it here but if it was actually used in gameplay I think this model would be maybe overkill we might see some framerate issues so I guess it makes sense they would only use them during that intro just to kind of have some expression in the animation so that's banjo by himself let's take a look at kazooie now kazooie by herself is 315 tries and this presents a kind of strange case because in the original game kazooie's never really by herself that's more of a banjo tooie thing so what I present to you here is kind of a Frankenstein mashup of the top half and the bottom half of kazooie put together I've created a monster I know much like banjos model kazooie's head is basically fully modelled beak and all the eyes are actually spherical they're not just a texture slapped on a flat surface and kazooie's kind of head feathers are actually modelled also you'll have to ignore the kind of extreme supermodel waist that I've given kazooie that's just how the kind of top and bottom half fit together I guess although if you see kazooie catwalk modeling in the future you'll know who to blame now you would never see kazooie's top half and bottom half kind of together in the same place there's always a backpack that separates the two halves and that's why we've ended up with this monstrosity in places where they could get away with it they've used alpha textures namely on the tail feathers and also kazooie's wings if you actually modeled the wings and the feathers you'd be adding significantly more polygons to the model and well would impact performance at some point I'm sure back in the n64 days it was a common practice to use flat textures to kind of represent these high detail areas so I guess the big question is now what happens if you pair both Banjo and Kazooie together in the same model well I did just that and came up with a model that was 540 tries in total however the very observant of you will notice that there's something different about banjos model there is significantly less detail in this model than there is the other model if we have a side-by-side comparison you can really tell the difference what's happening here is this is a model that's used when the camera is slightly further away so think in a similar way to the Diddy Kong Racing basic pyramid model that was used when the camera is very far away this is basically just another iteration of that only less extreme obviously so basically everything that was detailed before now becomes a lot more simple and there is a couple of textures emitted from this actual model like the belt buckle and some of the detail in a backpack once again the justification being that at this distance on a blurry CRT you'd never actually be able to see the missing details and this is a technique that games are still used today it's called LOD or level of detail basic premise being if something's far away you don't have any detail and if it's right up close you see everything and back in the n64 days this was a vital trick in order to get better performance out of your console I know what you're thinking what about banjo tooie well to be completely honest there's not an awful lot of difference between the models used in banjo kazooie and banjo tooie there are a couple of extra tries added here and there to add slightly more detail on the better versions of the models but really there isn't an awful lot to talk about however while I was getting a hold of banjo tooie models I discovered some of these other models that really surprised me and actually made me laugh quite a bit we were talking about levels of detail and the models that I came across actually display level of detail in some pretty hilarious ways I think you'll enjoy the first model is like a medium level of detailed banjo by himself this model is around about 422 tries and it's kind of the moly basically see most of in the game with the camera being a medium distance away nothing too crazy it's just a lower poly version of banjo the ones that I really want to focus on are these very extreme low levels of detail models which I just love the first of which is chunky bear banjo who has a pyramid triangle-shaped nose he's got big blocky hands with triangle feet and a blue wedge for a backpack a finest specimen you could not hope to find but also if I saw this coming from me in a dark alley I would run for my life because it's also kind of creepy in some way it kind of looks like you know how Dino in Pokemon can kind of replicate the look of a Pokemon except the eyes this looks like something was trying to replicate the look of banjo but just couldn't do any of it it got close but not quite close enough and the second model I managed to get from the game is the first model but now it's on the back of a creepy-looking kazooie so for those that are interested and I don't see why you wouldn't be watching this after all the Ponto model is a hundred and seventy two tries and the kazooie model is 192 tries so just a little bit more and these would be the absolute extreme minimum amount of tries that you could probably get away with on characters this complex but hey don't you feel better knowing that these guys exist in that game I'm pretty sure that this banjo model could become a meme at some point Internet do your worst and speaking of the worst I guess we have to talk about banjo kazooie nuts and bolts but firstly I have to preface this by saying this model is actually from Sonic and Sega all-stars racing where Banjo and Kazooie were actually a downloadable character this isn't from banjo-kazooie nuts and bolts and the reason it's not from that game is because apparently it's extremely difficult to extract models from that game nobody knows why and nobody's been able to do it so everything from here on out is basic speculation based on the banjo kazooie nuts and bolts design with that being said let's take a look at just banjo who is 6555 tries now this is just an opinion but I think it's an opinion that many people share and that's I don't particularly like this design because it's just so angular to me there seems to be like a charm that they're going for but it just doesn't pay off because banjo to me is more of a rounded character quite literally in some areas now with this model I don't believe it's exactly the same model that's used in banjo kazooie nuts and bolts I think they've made some changes the most notable of which is the fur texture that they have on this model it seems to be kind of well when you look up close it looks like matted fur it's kind of gross actually the way the fur looks in the actual banjo kazooie nuts-and-bolts looks way better and actually looks like fur I think this is kind of a Down rezzed version for the racing game just to keep the frame rate happy I don't know it's really sad that I don't have access to the nuts and bolts model otherwise we could make a really accurate comparison but I guess like I said its whole just speculation but in regards to this model some of the things I actually do really like is some of the texture work now I love the detail in the backpack all the stitches all the extra kind of patches and things it just adds that extra bit of detail and texture to something that's so important to the character design the same can be said about banjo shorts and the belt buckle is actually modeled this time and it's not just a 2d texture banjos face is very TV I guess this is the part of the design I don't really enjoy though and it's all these straight edges and the angles he is a square the nose is square the hands and fingers are square everything's just kind of very boxy in terms of try count and actual geometry this is a more complex model than we've seen back in the n64 days but they kind of lost the charm of the original design and that's sad really because turns out an earlier take on this game was going to have the original design in the actual game and that would have been better in my opinion but hey it is just an opinion so you can step away from the comments mr. judgey pants I see you were about to tap it in if I somehow come across the actual nuts-and-bolts model it will be great to compare these two as with the rest of the other models from the other games but as it stands right now it's an actually well-done model with a not great design and that's all I got to say on that one but before we move on we also have to take a look at kazooie and the face on kazooie's default pose kind of says it all now kazooie's model is roughly two thousand four hundred and seventy four tries and is a very good reason for this high number and that is each one of kazooie's feathers is an individual 2d plane with a texture of a feather attached to it and kazooie's got a whole lot of feathers in either banjo kazooie nuts-and-bolts or Sega and Sonic all-stars racing you never actually see the bottom half of kazooie she's always in the backpack and that's why she doesn't have any legs but overall I think kazooie's design favored a little bit better than banjos in both of these games purely because it's less angular and maybe a bit more true to the original character design there's nothing overly complex going on with kazooie's geometry it's a really simple model actually having the feathers be individually textured on two different planes and placed around the body is actually quite a great way of giving extra texture to the character but what I do feel is kind of weird is that the feathers on top of the head don't have a feather texture necessarily that is kind of like shaped as feathers I guess it's all implied really but I would have liked to have seen them actually add an alpha texture to that just to have big giant feathers I don't know it's kazooie I guess but it's just not the version we deserved but many many years later we finally got what I consider to be the best version of Banjo and Kazooie that we have so far so strap in boys and girls for about three minutes of me just gushing over this model because it really is the best version in my opinion firstly some stats banjo by himself is a whopping sixteen thousand four hundred and twenty-one tries the most try heavy model we have so far and probably for a good long while too now this design of banjo sticks very heavily to the early kind of key art that was associated with the first banjo kazooie the angular design of banjo kazooie nuts-and-bolts is gone and what we end up with is a beautifully modeled rounded banjo this is how we all imagine banjo to look if he had high fidelity back in 1998 this is banjo the texture work in these smash ultimate models are just so beautifully done that maybe that's an episode in itself but the texture work here is particularly good in relation to banjo they've done some very clever things with the further if we take a closer look what you'll see is alpha textures laid top of each other and when viewed from a distance they look like they add actual thickness to the further in the past games when they've done this even banjo-kazooie itself have usually just used an alpha texture on one layer and while this does look like it's fur it doesn't have any real depth to it this method does alleviate that problem and it actually gives it depth from a distance it's so very subtle that from a distance you'd never even pick up on it but it is there it's a great technique every separate element that makes up banjos character design is this time model there are no just 2d textures making belt buckles in this one even the Rope of the necklace is modeled I particularly loved the detail of how the straps of the backpack kind of joined to this metal link in the middle and how they all wrap around this is decide so well done hidden inside the backpack is even the rare logo which is something you very rarely see no pun intended but it's there here's something I didn't think I'd ever say but if we look up banjo shorts we can see that they actually kind of funnel inwards to stop you being able to see inside banjos model the whole thing is just beautifully done I love everything about this model and it is for me the definitive banjo model but what's banjo without kazooie let's take a look at kazooie's model from smash ultimate kazooie by herself is nine thousand and thirty two tries and she looks kind of surprised to know that which if you add them together means in any scene where both Banjo and Kazooie a present in smash ultimate there's roughly twenty-five thousand tries on screen just for those two characters the head is a lot of detail another thing you'll notice is that kazooie is entirely modeled here there's not just the top half and no legs it's all here some key places that they may have saved some tries is by modeling the feathers and applying a 2d texture to them like we saw in banjo kazooie nuts and bolts but this time it's done with some restraint it's not feathers for days everywhere they're just in the key places that matter the same goes for kazooie's beautiful eyelashes which are also just a 2d texture applied to a model around the eye again as with banjo this is kazooie this is the best version we have so far I absolutely adore what they do with the models in Super Smash Brothers ultimate and honestly Band and kazooie being in addition to that and having these great models is just such a joy to actually take a look at we've come such a long way from back in the early n64 days in the first banjo kazooie all the way up to Super Smash Brothers ultimate and the design I'm glad to say his relatively stayed the same except for the obvious outlier which is banjo kazooie nuts-and-bolts but I'm gonna stop bashing that game it's a dead horse let's move on hopefully sometime in the not-too-distant future we can take a look at another banjo kazooie game which is possibly a remake and take a look at the models from that game that would be a dream but for now that's low-poly and thank you guys for watching it's taken a while for this episode to actually be made but I'm so thankful for everybody who supports the series there are other low-poly episodes with other characters please go check them out I also want to thank everybody who supports the patreon I know it's been very quiet recently but honestly you guys have kept the lights on and I really appreciate that you do see you in the next episode

Channel: A+Start

Views: 553,678

Keywords: Banjo & Kazooie, Banjo-Kazooie, Rare, Nintendo 64, Video game models, Low Poly, Texturing, 3D Turnaround, Polygons, Nintendo Switch, Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Id: up-JrcJPtsM

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/darthsirhcus]

If they make a new Banjo game or a remaster of the first game (maybe even Tooie or Diddy Kong Racing 64), Banjo needs to look like he does in Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

[u/therealjam3s]

hey i love a-start