Super Mario Brothers in 3D

Super Mario Bros. - World ?-1 by ~NES–still-the-best on deviantART

Fantastic, eh? I can’t imagine the amount of work that goes into rendering this scene from the classic Nintendo Entertainment System game Super Mario Brothers in 3D. I mean, I’m into 2D rendering, thanks to my obsession with Adobe Photoshop, and it takes me an entire day just to do one small piece. Even in a rush, it takes me more than an hour, as in the case of covers I had made for a local newspaper.

Whew! Hats off to you, NES–still-the-best.

Here’s his comments on this wonderful piece:

This is the main culmination of my work over the last eight or so months. Not that this render strictly took over eight straight months to make. It’s just that all my previous 3D renders done over that time span served as stepping stones leading to this final “8-bit magnum opus.”

For those who may not know what this is, it’s my 3D modeling take on the landmark 8-bit video game Super Mario Brothers, for the orginal Nintendo. I tried to cram everything but the proverbial kitchen sink into this render (unfortunately, I can’t really find a way to incorporate Bowser, Podoboo, and Blooper in this deviation).

Everything in this deviation is “built” by plotting cubes side by side, not that unlike if I were to build everything with Lego blocks (which I’d like to start doing soon, if money permits). Some have asked what program I used; I used Bryce 5, but I imagine for this style of voxel modeling that any 3D modeling program could be used with generally the same results.

Image embedded from deviantART. Super Mario Brothers and all characters and objects shown in the image are property of Nintendo.