Mario Kart Character Pack Update
Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2025 10:43 pm
Hello everyone.
You might remember Lu9's Mario Kart Character Pack he released ten years ago. It was a great addition, especially for Mario fans! However, these cars/characters weren't accurate to their Mario Kart DS counterpart, which is what they're supposed to be based from. So I thought I'd give an update, not a small one, but a bigger one!
That's right! Since 2020, I've been working on and off on this pack. I started giving them alternate skins, different stats and custom honk sounds. At that time that was it, but after learning Blender and acquired the skills for making custom tracks and cars, I changed the character models. They're now using their high-poly variant. The models where ripped on my own with their driving animation poses taken straight from the game. As for the karts, the UV and wheels were properly adjusted to be more faithful. Shadow as vertex color on all the models were added as well. Optimisation for the textures were made too (they're half the size now, beinf 256x256 instead of 512x512).
The stats was reaujusted. In my opinion from the result, everyone should be more stable to drive, since I changed the positions of the wheels as well as the inertia and center of mass. The original parameters were copy-pasted from Toyeca.
Other than that (which might be the most exciting for some), I added extra characters! Dry Bones, Shy Guy and R.O.B were missing in the initial pack, so I added them. But besides the 3 of them, there's also more of them that wasn't originally from MK DS, such as Rosalina, Birdo, Bowser Jr., Giana, etc...
In its current state, there's still some important stuff to do. I'm giving every characters their own collision huls. Their parameters might be tweaked a bit more for more uniqueness, although there's some chance I'll need help with. Car parameters are very confusing as I can't really tell if the change I did was giving something I want, especially because every changes affect the others. Also, some character (2 specificaly) will get a remodel.
I also have to add more skins, at least from 8 to 16 per character. Suggestions for them are welcome! For now, the third of the cast only have 4 and less.
Anyway, enough talk. Here's some screenshots:
See you soon for more updates!
You might remember Lu9's Mario Kart Character Pack he released ten years ago. It was a great addition, especially for Mario fans! However, these cars/characters weren't accurate to their Mario Kart DS counterpart, which is what they're supposed to be based from. So I thought I'd give an update, not a small one, but a bigger one!
That's right! Since 2020, I've been working on and off on this pack. I started giving them alternate skins, different stats and custom honk sounds. At that time that was it, but after learning Blender and acquired the skills for making custom tracks and cars, I changed the character models. They're now using their high-poly variant. The models where ripped on my own with their driving animation poses taken straight from the game. As for the karts, the UV and wheels were properly adjusted to be more faithful. Shadow as vertex color on all the models were added as well. Optimisation for the textures were made too (they're half the size now, beinf 256x256 instead of 512x512).
The stats was reaujusted. In my opinion from the result, everyone should be more stable to drive, since I changed the positions of the wheels as well as the inertia and center of mass. The original parameters were copy-pasted from Toyeca.
Other than that (which might be the most exciting for some), I added extra characters! Dry Bones, Shy Guy and R.O.B were missing in the initial pack, so I added them. But besides the 3 of them, there's also more of them that wasn't originally from MK DS, such as Rosalina, Birdo, Bowser Jr., Giana, etc...
In its current state, there's still some important stuff to do. I'm giving every characters their own collision huls. Their parameters might be tweaked a bit more for more uniqueness, although there's some chance I'll need help with. Car parameters are very confusing as I can't really tell if the change I did was giving something I want, especially because every changes affect the others. Also, some character (2 specificaly) will get a remodel.
I also have to add more skins, at least from 8 to 16 per character. Suggestions for them are welcome! For now, the third of the cast only have 4 and less.
Anyway, enough talk. Here's some screenshots:
See you soon for more updates!