I know they worked hard on this and it does look good, but they really need an art director, or at least to pay more attention to modern Mario games for some visual direction.
Their current shaders simply don't work. Too high on the specular, too low on the diffuse output. They need to tackle some look-dev before pushing too far in the wrong direction.
And while the textures are more detailed than a typical Mario title in terms of pixel density, the actual texture work is lacking in artistic direction. Mainly the environmental textures. In some instances they're using tiled photo based textures which is completely out of place for a Mario title. They need to be digitally painted from scratch with simple yet bold shape language and vibrant contrasting colors.
I understand it's a work in progress and that those textures may be place holders, but those shader issues should have been addressed by this stage of development. I'm not expecting their texture work to reach Nintendo artist quality, but there is still much room for improvement.
Skybox outside the castle looks great and I dig the colors. Needs more contrast between the sky and clouds though and the clouds could use bolder shapes.
I'm not trying to be negative, but if they're going to do this thing I'd like to see visual improvements that go beyond brute force high res assets, I want them to nail the style as well.
On the positive side, the models look great! Not sure if some are ripped from modern Mario titles, but that Lakitu model in particular has some very well organized and efficient topology. It's a professionally built game res model. Well done!
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