so do i i think they should come back, they would look even better on HD

It does look absolutely amazing to anyone, its a 2002 game! Even in today's standards the game looks incredible. The problem with using pre-rendered graphics is the fixed game angle and tank controls which a lot of people hate.

I thought I was the only one that made this curious comparison with matte paintings.

​@skycloud4802 I feel like it's a lost art. Those backgrounds were beautiful.

Sorry for the 2 year reply, but basically the camera is focused on link, and the prerendered background is like a panorama image

@@CyMations Ummm no... It isn't "panoramic", that scene actually looks 3D, remember that prerendered backgrounds were used for detailed scenes that couldn't be handled by old consoles. In that scene the real background could be a cylinder and everything else could be a plane (besides the characters) Not sure, I would have to play that scene by myself to know better.

It makes me as a player feel as though the playable character is trapped and isolated when the zombies surround that character. Often a nearby zombie head might obscure my vision a bit, creating an illusion that I as an observer am separated from my own video game character distinctly, and all I can do is watch helplessly as the monsters close in. It's very unsettling. I want to help them as I feel isolated and disconnected from my character, especially with the harder to master tank controls.

AgentMorgan2010 play Abe's oddysey remastered. It's a clear example where prerendered is much better

I am personally glad its dead.

Just look at third birthday for the psp. Not that I hate it but it kinda lost a bit of its charm

@Charles Brown lols, you obviously didn't even play the OG resident evil 2. It's so vastly different compared to the remake.

@Melvin Gravediggerz99 because the new one is much worse than the old one. The 3d background from the new one makes you feel like there's no much else than what you're looking at. The old one instead creates mystery and makes you want to explore

The Five Nights at Freddy's series are games which still use this pre-rendered technique.

Street Fighter Ex's infinite stages and trippy camera angles were so awesome. im mad they ditched that for the new 2.5 Sf5 look. SF kinda lost its identity after ex

Nightcaster460 me too!

It's just multiple pictures and cameras really. In the case of Hyrule market it's just one really wide picture that tiles left to right that they pan across.

***** You need more thumbs up.

Both use Voxels. One is blended, the other is just left as cubes. You apply varying combination of noise filters over a predefined set of parameters like grass and dirt levels. Look up stuff like Perlin noise which is the most common.

Pedro Vasconcelos The next video although not exactly what you're after, may be of interest!

Anything you do will be interesting, seeing as I'm just starting my game development career. I really liked the idea of your new series and i'll be watching every one. :)

Pedro Vasconcelos Thanks mate, appreciate that!

Pedro Vasconcelos They were mostly using something akin to Animated Gifs that can be programmed to follow certain coordinates, depending on the frame. It is very similar to Mario Kart 64--all characters and items were 2D sprites, which had 8 different positions and animations depending on the position of the camera. Those were workarounds for hte limited hardware of the time. But CGJ can elaborate on it much better.

Antonio Briceño No, those would be for the eye shape, which I already know how to do in Maya. They are multiple, sequenced files, programmed to alternate. The irises/pupils on the other hand, are a single file, that somehow "moves" around the 3D object. Moving the texture is somewhat simple. My doubts are on how they made it not go outside the eye and how everything is pieced together.

Ironspriter Thanks mate, appreciate it!

yup ive been on a hunt for many years, seing how the develpers make cutscenes from fallout2, little big adventure , final fantasy 7 ,and so on, got any source ?, i know little big adventure have a bit of a behind the scenes, but not alot

I have been studying into this very same thing ever since its reveal. The closest I have gotten is it being similar to the gels from Portal 2.

Scott Flake Haha, I was thinking the same.

Alfred threatened to shove batman out of a moving vehicle.

I wonder the same thing. Are there actual 3D models of Racoon city sitting on Capcom servers for all these years?

Probably Soft Image. Most console games were made on Silicon Work Stations. The lighting looks like Soft Image to me. More modern software like Maya came out at the tail end of the 90s. 3D Studio came out in 96 but it was mostly used by American studios. I think Capcom probably used Silicon Work Stations through the Dreamcast era. Nowadays there's dozens of 3D software. If you wanted to make a pre rendered game with the best possible lighting and geometry you would just import the images into your engine after setting up the scene in a 3D program. The problem is Nowadays game engines running on modern hardware can get you really, really good looking scenes. 3D modeling programs can better handle millions of polygons per frame since they don't have to worry about game elements but the improvement is minimal

Easy. Well sort of. They take the pre-rendered background, and add a layer s of fog with varying levels of transparency. The hardware may not have been able to handle rendering a background but something simple like a uniformly coloured fog wouldn't cause too much trouble.

That's exactly how it's done in Ocarina of Time. The BG is projected as a texture in front of the camera while Link is walking around an unseen 3D room.

Not necessarily more complex, just replace the backgrounds with green screen.

Probably Soft Image. Most console games were made on Silicon Work Stations. More modern software like Maya came out at the tail end of the 90s. 3D Studio came out in 96 but it was mostly used by American studios

In SMG the bee has 3 or more layers with each layer being more transparent than the deeper one

3DS Max.

They programmed them with separate AI...

***** I know that this isn't the same as an in depth explanation, and you may well know this already, but if you play the original Portal in developer commentary mode, they actually explain it fairly well. Hope that helps in the meantime. I agree, it would be a cool and informative topic for the series.

Tustin2121 hmmm a bug that wasn't discovered.

Animation of the mouth opening and closing, they're not that complex.

pre-rendered tend to looks better because A) its just one image rendered at the highest quality and inserted into the game with post-production and B)the characters and dynamic objects are realtime in them so they are lower quality

mike mikeson I realised, there's a little annotation in there! Thanks all the same.

+TheFireburn02 why is this video clutch?