Your thread title was asking what modeling tool Nintendo uses. Multiple people answered you, so there is no need to get all high and mighty that your "real question" wasn't answered. Oh, and Pixar DOES use Maya for modeling. Marionette is their animation tool and they use RenderMan for rendering.

You keep saying that you are an "art director". What art have you directed?

Mario's design is largely based on two concepts - technical limitations of the Nintendo platforms (so simplified geometry) and use use of bright, saturated colors for wide audience appeal. His original design was based on color and pixel limitations. For instance, do you know why Mega Man is blue? It is because on the original NES the artists had the widest number of shades of blue to work with.

I have to repeat as I did above, but there aren't special tools used by any of the Nintendo teams. They use the exact same tools and processed as everyone else in the games industry. In fact, the processes aren't much different than Resident Evil 5's, except they didn't have to go through the pains of generating high poly versions of the maps to create normal maps.

Nintendo's choice of colors for the majority of their first party games are based on aesthetic appeal. Blue is very soothing, so they provide a lot of sky view in the Mario games with nice calming shades of blue. Environments use a lot of green, because the human eye has its geatest level of color perception in the green range (well, except red-green color blind folks). It is just basic color psychology.

It isn't that this forum is not the right place to discuss art (this is in fact the visual arts forum), but your question was incredibly broad. If you are wanting to know every detail behind the art team's approach for say, Super Mario Galaxy, that is going to be impossible to answer. Literally thousands of man hours went into it. You have to realize that the creation of games nowadays is very formulaic and the processes are rigid, because the production resources to create a game such as the latest Mario titles are astronomical.

The only narrow (and thus answerable) question you've asked is what tools they use.
- Max/Maya/XSI, whatever for modeling (they are all pretty much the same)
- Photoshop for texture creation
- Max/Maya/XSI for animation, or possibly MotionBuilder
- NintendoWare Viewer for previewing what the model will look like on the Wii

If you are interested in specific processes or possible motivations behind particular choices the development team made, then ask away.

Quote:Original post by zer0wolf
Oh, and Pixar DOES use Maya for modeling. Marionette is their animation tool and they use RenderMan for rendering.

I personally know someone that worked on the new Pixar short (Partly Cloudy) and he modeled a bunch of characters for it using Lightwave. Though that might have been a special case considering he was hired freelance and was allowed to work at home on it. (which is a rarity for Pixar in itself)

Not to say they don't use Maya, just adding to your post that no studio really sticks firmly to any one piece of software to get the job done. =)

Anyway, going back to Jeordie's first post in this thread... In my opinion, for an art director, you have no sense of what goes into making art. Which is odd, considering you're an art director... Maybe that title means something different in Italy, but I always thought it meant that the person understood the art making process.

To ask a question like "what tool does nintendo use to make art because it's beautiful" sounds a lot like "I have no idea what I'm doing and I have no idea how art is made". Have you never heard the expression "a true artist never blames the tools"?

You keep saying you want to know what they use by comparing it to wanting to know if "Caravaggio" painted with oil or acrylics to make his art, when the real answer is that it doesn't freakin' matter what he used. A great artist is a great artist. He could have used crayons and his art would be considered great.

The same holds even more true today, as digital artwork is all in the same category. No matter what software you use, you can get the same result as another artist, because it all boils down to a bunch of pixels on a screen.

One artist could create a 3d model of mario, texture it, light it, rig it and pose it and make a gorgeous image out of it. Another artist could draw the same picture pixel by pixel. Another artist could paint the picture in photoshop. Another artist could use only the spraypaint tool in paint and make the same image.

Each of the methods may take a different amount of time and skill but they all end in the same exact result. If you don't understand this, I don't see how you're an art director.

You listed games and said "there's just an appeal" to them. As an art director you should already understand why there is an appeal to them. Not that there "just is one". As others have stated, the appeal is the colors used and the saturation, the shapes, the lighting, the way the objects are textured, and so on.

Quote:Original post by Konidias

Quote:Original post by zer0wolf
Oh, and Pixar DOES use Maya for modeling. Marionette is their animation tool and they use RenderMan for rendering.

I personally know someone that worked on the new Pixar short (Partly Cloudy) and he modeled a bunch of characters for it using Lightwave. Though that might have been a special case considering he was hired freelance and was allowed to work at home on it. (which is a rarity for Pixar in itself)

Not to say they don't use Maya, just adding to your post that no studio really sticks firmly to any one piece of software to get the job done. =)

Yeah, that was pretty much my point. They use the same modeling tools as everyone else, except since they have uber large production budgets, they can even more easily allow individual artists to use whatever they're most comfortable with and allow the technical artists to deal with the pipeline issues.

Quote:As an art director you should already understand why there is an appeal to them. Not that there "just is one". As others have stated, the appeal is the colors used and the saturation, the shapes, the lighting, the way the objects are textured, and so on.

Hence my asking why the OP keeps referring to himself as an Art Director. Art Directors have years of experience and are not only able to figure this sort of stuff out themselves, but are able to comfortably direct the art of his team to accomplish said goals.