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Can the original SNES Donkey Kong Country graphics be recreated in realtime with today's machines?

Cow Mengde

Cow Mengde

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,705
When I say that, I mean in fully playable form and not just a real-time cinematic. I also don't mean the SNES graphics, but rather the renders they made before they were converted to something SNES friendly. Also, I'm factoring in the advances they made to the rendering as the series progressed. Like in the first game, the fur was just a normal mapped texture, but from DKC2 - 3, the fur had individual hairs. Yes, I'm aware that these models are not polygons, but that's why I think this is an interesting question to ask.

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Kcannon

Kcannon

Member
Oct 30, 2017
5,661
1 and 2 look perfectly doable. 3 is a bit tricky due to the water, but ultimately could be done.
 
AtomicShroom

AtomicShroom

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Oct 28, 2017
3,075
Close, but not faithfully, no. Those renders used nurbs instead of polygons, so you're never going to be able to get something that looks this perfectly round across the board in real-time.

Edit: also we'd need real-time ray tracing of that quality for this level of lighting and shadow detail and precision. We're going to get closer next-gen, but not quite there yet either.
 
Cuboid 64

Cuboid 64

Member
Oct 28, 2017
354
I remember seeing someone recreate that first picture in Dreams at least. It'd be really cool to see a game actually try this look/style. I LOVE old early 90's CG, even with its faults.
 
jalkerway

jalkerway

Member
Oct 27, 2017
273

If you mean making the same game but in real time graphics, I'd say pretty close and with more effort probably damn near exact.
 

Superking

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,619
Cow Mengde said:
When I say that, I mean in fully playable form and not just a real-time cinematic. I also don't mean the SNES graphics, but rather the renders they made before they were converted to something SNES friendly. Also, I'm factoring in the advances they made to the rendering as the series progressed. Like in the first game, the fur was just a normal mapped texture, but from DKC2 - 3, the fur had individual hairs. Yes, I'm aware that these models are not polygons, but that's why I think this is an interesting question to ask.

rXEi5uh.jpg


vgBQxo4.jpg


NjiCeIM.jpg
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How did they manage to make high resolution pictures like that back in 1994? :O
 
SNRUB

SNRUB

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,009
New Jersey
I mean, Banjo-Kazooie's design in Smash more or less look just like the renders they made 20 years back so it's not impossible.
 
Nocturnowl

Nocturnowl

Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,082
Gnawty Beaver has seen some shit

Anyway more gloriously outdated renders for all

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Though I did think the thread title was leaning more towards this stuff
latest
 
PaulloDEC

PaulloDEC

Visited by Knack
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Oct 25, 2017
7,408
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I feel like the challenge in doing this would be mostly about matching the peculiarities of the rendering techniques used back in the day.
 
AtomicShroom

AtomicShroom

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Oct 28, 2017
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Oblivion said:
:O

That's insane. Shocked how anyone could do anything on them given those constraints.
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Keep in mind that's when they were modeling those shots, they could interact with them in real time using only the wireframes and quickly generating low-quality versions to get an idea of what they were doing. Then they'd send them to the render machine for hours and pray it turned out as good as they imagined.
 
Baccus

Baccus

Banned
Dec 4, 2018
5,307
I'd think a baked lighting solution would put it really close with today's technology. Some stuff is way better now, it's perhaps the round edges and hard shadows that are still a problem.
 
PaulloDEC

PaulloDEC

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Cow Mengde said:
That's exactly what I proposed this question.
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I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be possible to create something very similar. Obviously you're not going to be able to match the smoothness/roundedness perfectly, and the lighting would have to be carefully tailored in each scene, but otherwise it seems reasonable to me.
 
AtomicShroom

AtomicShroom

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Oct 28, 2017
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PaulloDEC said:
I feel like the challenge in doing this would be mostly about matching the peculiarities of the rendering techniques used back in the day.
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No kidding! Real-time graphics were never meant to try and reproduce this specific style and have even surpassed it in many different respects.

It's also interesting to consider that real-time graphics you see in games today use copious amounts of Level of Detail (LOD) to render less polys the further away something is from the camera, lowering its detail. Those kinds of renders didn't have to even consider such limitations!
 
Nano-Nandy

Nano-Nandy

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Mar 26, 2019
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collige

collige

Member
Oct 31, 2017
12,772
Like most 90s CG renders, poly count, IQ, and reflection quality is still untouchable real time, but we can make things look a whole lot better as a whole.
 
jotun?

jotun?

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,490
Same as with Toy Story 1. No, we can't really match the perfectly rounded surfaces or ray-tracing in real time, but we have much better tools and techniques that allow us to do things that look so much better in every other regard, while getting close enough on the curves and lighting, to more than make up for it overall
 
Inugami

Inugami

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Oct 25, 2017
14,995
collige said:
Like most 90s CG renders, poly count, IQ, and reflection quality is still untouchable real time, but we can make things look a whole lot better as a whole.
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These weren't movie quality renders, I mean you can look them right in the OP for the final product.

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Or the above wireframes of the time. Rare didn't have a server farm producing this stuff, just a couple high end work stations. Absolutely nothing done couldn't be replicated and done better in real time today.

jotun? said:
Same as with Toy Story 1. No, we can't really match the perfectly rounded surfaces or ray-tracing in real time, but we have much better tools and techniques that allow us to do things that look so much better in every other regard, while getting close enough on the curves and lighting, to more than make up for it overall
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Toy Story was done with a huge render farm. DKC games were done on a couple workstations. Nothing they were doing is outside of today's reach.
 
DonMigs85

DonMigs85

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Oct 28, 2017
2,770
Even Toy Story 1 looks pretty bad today. Except perhaps for lighting accuracy, we can easily exceed it today (look at Kingdom Hears)
 
Tom Nook Says...

Tom Nook Says...

Member
Jan 15, 2019
4,393
That mid-90's CG stuff has aged poorly. Literally everything looks like it's made of either rubber or plastic. I think it worked at the time because it was visually unprecedented. Other stuff from the early-mid 90's more commonly looked like the box art below, so any CG stuff was eye-catching.

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Leo

Leo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,546
Old-school DKC art style is amazing, people who shit on it are going to hell.
 
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