189303 No.15173940
we have seen revivals in many forms; 2D graphics in every flavour (8-bit, 16-bit, atari-like, etc), early 3D low-poly… but why haven't we seen a pre-rendered revival of sorts? this stuff ages like wine, isn't that hard to make, with modern technology you can make them hi-res enough to withstand the test of time… the only drawback is that it wouldn't work for many genres but so do 2D/low-poly stuff. It would be a great solution for indies to make good looking games without going broke.
d682b8 No.15173951
>>15173940
We lost the chance of that with the remake of resident evil 2 being over the shoulder instead of fixed camera like the remake of the first game.
0ce5a0 No.15173954
>>15173940
Requires too much artistic talent and time. Any old schmuck can make pixelshit or low poly quick and easy. Pre rendered backgrounds are different in that there aren't any artificial constraints like pretending you're working with old hardware.
b8e354 No.15174093
>>15173940
My favorite types of pre-rendered images are the ones that show beta designs in them
d29562 No.15174330
>>15173940
Neverhood didn't use CG, everything was made with plasticine.
22ef93 No.15174960
>>15173940
> this stuff ages like wine
It ages like milk. Look at any of those classic games on a modern monitor and tell me it looks good. At least 8 and 16-bit sprite work stretches accordingly.
> isn't that hard to make
You have to create entire 3D models and animate them as necessary just to take screenshots to use them as background/foreground layers, then model invisible 3D terrain for players to move around upon on top of that. It's a lot more work than just making a 3D environment.
The only reason they went with pre-rendered back in the day was because using those 3D models in real time simply wasn't feasible. Now it is.
> with modern technology you can make them hi-res enough to withstand the test of time…
No screenshot of a 3D asset is going to last longer than the asset itself, which can be scaled as needed depending on resolution and aspect ratio, and modified in real time with FOV zooming and camera panning.
Don't get me wrong, I fucking love pre-rendered shit, but it's a lot of work, more work than just using modern 3D.
>>15173951
I would have been fine with full-3D background and models but fixed camera gameplay, but no, Capcom had to ruin yet another fucking good thing.
fbfa17 No.15174977
61605e No.15175437
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
Isn't Five nights at Freddie's pre-rendered?
Also here's some footage of a demo for a pre-rendered Humongous Entertainment game that got cancelled. It would have been another Junior Adventure along the lines of Putt-Putt and Pajama Sam, and like the other Junior Adventures it is a very nice looking game.
1beaba No.15175546
It generally ages like milk. Have you looked at that lighting? It is atrocious.
9aa3ef No.15175770
For me this style is extra nostalgic. Even though the lighting is typically harsh it just seems to comfy to me
619649 No.15175817
>>15174977
This. There's still pre-rendered games being made, just not many.
Unless you're putting a ridiculous amount of detail into the original 3d assets there's no reason not to render them on the spot, and even then most detail can be reworked as tessellation/normal maps and whatnot. Also, a pre-rendered 3d character is a sprite nightmare, needing a different one for each animation frame in each possible angle. Better to just have it be 3d in-scene.
59251d No.15175827
>>15173940
It honestly looks like crap. The Abe screenshot looks okay because they hid the details with shadow and fog.
49c775 No.15175915
>>15175437
>FNAF
yes, actually, same with the desolate hope. Scott is one of the few who realizes the quality of a pre-rendered environment. I don't think his fetish for complex robotics would work otherwise.
189303 No.15176487
>>15175546
>Have you looked at that lighting? It is atrocious.
because it's stuff made in 1997 for fucks sake. With modern tools you can make pic related
d6bd97 No.15176967
>>15173940
Pre-rendering is used in games. See baked lighting in maps or video.
Pre-rendering is terrible though since everything is static. I cant imagine an implementation today that would make sense since any scene that is complex enough to require pre-rendering is a dynamic environment with so many things going on. The primary issue with pre-rendering is the requirement of a fixed camera.
You've got me thinking though. One could implement a state machine holding pre-rendered scenes so that any state could determine complex, pre-rendered scenes to load into memory based on relative adjacent position to the current state… I may actually implement this for funsies…
d6bd97 No.15177015
>>15176967
Actually, fuck that. You would have to take into account literally millions of possible states just for one room in a game like Doom.
I can't imagine a system that's quicker to load this stuff into memory than one that could generate it from scratch. A complex game like crysis would require a million states just for one leaf falling off a tree. A game like risk of rain would require billions of states for every possible combination of screen.
d6bd97 No.15177042
And you know what?fuck you too, OP, you dumb fucking cunt.
If you want to watch a shitty, pre-rendered hunk of garbage from a fixed angle then watch an animated film. You fucking retard cunt. Dumb fuck.
63bd64 No.15177069
I dunno about you guys, but pre-rendered backgrounds are so much comfier than real time rendered. They have a simultaneously cartoony and realistic look to them that makes them feel dreamlike or surreal. It's very hard to pull off that kind of aesthetic with real time rendering. Like some anons above said, part of it is the lighting. It feels like you're walking around in a Renaissance-tier painting.
Look at the pic of Corel in OP, how many of you think Square-Enix would ever be capable of reproducing that level of comfy in their FF7 remake with real time rendering? It'd end up looking more plastic and a bit too "hyperrealistic". It'd still look good, probably, but it won't have the comfiness of first pic in OP.
600251 No.15177112
>>15174960
> Now it is.
Not 100% true, yes technology has improved and graphics today look better than real-time rendered models from the PSX era, but the pre-rendered backgrounds used certain techniques like global illumination(which gives extremely realistic lighting, but can't be done in real time, instead of gourad which is used in real-time rendering) for more detailed/realistic CGI renders. It's why even after all these years, a movie like Toy Story looks in certain aspects better than latest gen vidya, and it's not just lazy developers, some things just can't be done in real time.
e6ffec No.15177133
>>15177015
You're an idiot pretending to understand something you don't have a clue of. Go play one of the Myst games to see pre-rendered backgrounds with moving parts in action. Pre-rendered tech was big in a time when pic related was the standard for in-engine 3d rendering.
63bd64 No.15177134
>>15177112
Why did Woody move his badge from his right side to his left side in KH3?
600251 No.15177136
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>15177112
>some things just can't be done in real time.
Should have said in real time, but with the textures that we have today, even something like Quake 2, can almost have real-time lightning.
Sadly no more hooktube, and I am too lazy to webm, but in my defence it's not e-celb garbage
f17b42 No.15177144
>>15177069
it does invoke a surreal quality. but i feel like its hard to do anything else with it.
d06391 No.15177272
>>15177112
It's also that when something is pre-rendered the designer can tweak values like lighting to look really nice for just that single moment.
Wheras in a vidya the models can appear in different places than the designer intended meaning it looks worse. It's why some of the conversations in Fallout New Vegas look great because the devs intended them to be very cinematic and put a lot of work into framing it to look nice. Like Doc Mitchell here where he is scripted to sit at this chair at the start of the game. But in more random one-off conversations like this one the lighting looks like shit because the devs didn't put a lot of work into making it look really nice. It's often a lot easier to just put a global light value and light the models with that rather than make every single small moment look polished. It's infeasible in a big open world game like this one.
0ce5a0 No.15177383
>>15177372
>directly linking to neogaf
I'll cut you some slack since those are great backgrounds, but still.
63bd64 No.15177411
It might also be worth pointing out that with pre-rendering, you can do some manual post-processing work using your superior human ability of judgment and perception that algorithms are really bad at doing. Hence why some of this look so much like old school paintings.
189303 No.15177580
>>15177372
good stuff… and yet they released a PC version without those hi-res backgrounds. Fuck Squenix seriously
de84aa No.15177607
>>15173940
I've gone through countless interviews with devs of good indie games and I can tell you that the reason why indies don't tend to do pre-rendered is that with pre-rendered graphics you need to have a strong idea of what you want your game to be. The problem is that most indie devs will tell you that they weren't too sure what they wanted the game to be when they started.
You need a strong vision for the game otherwise you're going to waste a lot of time making these insanely high quality assets and renders just to potentially throw them out.
This isn't even to mention that with today's technology, pre-rendered can basically look like reality and the workload involved in pre-rendered images is such that movies sometimes need MULTIPLE studios to make their CG for them.
REmake 2 could have had pre-rendered graphics that look just like real photographs but that could potentially have required time and man-power that they simple didn't have (This is obviously bullshit but I'm just playing devil's advocate here. We all know they did the over-the-shoulder camera so they can get money from the "RE starts at 4" crowd) Where this becomes a problem for indies is that often times indie teams have a single artist and pre-rendered graphics absolutely require a team simply because of how much work needs to go into them.
376a41 No.15177846
>>15176487
When i first looked at the game a long time ago, i thought those were 100% real-time graphics.
a162e6 No.15178081
>>15177580
Because they don't have all of them.
189303 No.15178146
>>15178081
they could remake the three mainline FFs from PSX ala capcom and people would shower them with gold. But instead we get lazy ports and a modern style remake that may never see the light
5a5361 No.15178156
>>15176487
And plus that game came out in two-thousand-fucking-three. Tech has come a long way since then, but nobody is willing to take a chance on pre-rendered graphics. These days we could probably have backgrounds indistinguishable from real life.
189303 No.15178204
>>15178156
>These days we could probably have backgrounds indistinguishable from real life.
either that or surreal uncanny valley styles like pic related. Possibilities are endless but sadly devs don't give a damn about anything other than making functional looking games. Art-style experimentation in vidya peaked with the change of millenium
f1d0ac No.15179371
>>15178205
I'd play a game with that aesthetic.
eb0b7b No.15188594
Thread saving bump. I can't right now but I wanted to write some stuff about this topic.
12eaa6 No.15188623
>>15177136
>Youtube compression completely destroying the image making it a muddy mess.
4d3f2c No.15188647
>>15174330
And then digitalized
It's still rendered previously from entering it
561996 No.15188649
Thought it looked great in FFX
fa3576 No.15188707
>>15188623
To be fair, the video has a link to the original capture in the description.
12eaa6 No.15188718
>>15188707
Yeah I saw that, Good to see someone be considerate.
bca70d No.15188728
>>15188649
Baten Kaitos also used them well, as far as sixth gen games go.
0df4d2 No.15188783
Because it involves throwing tons of effort at something that ultimately looks likes shit. If you're going to have a 2D background then learn how to draw it by hand. I do not miss the days of graphic whoring in 2D games, which is literally what this garbage always was.
42f385 No.15188940
>>15188783
Explain in detail how >>15176487 looks like shit. From here it looks like you're just a retard that can't see the potential in old techniques mixed with modern capabilities.
000000 No.15189618
>>15173940
By far, my favorite style of 3D graphics and visuals. That is a revival that i will celebrate when it happens.
9fa391 No.15189625
>>15188728
>>15188728
Baten Kaitos was a great game visually speaking, the VA was atrocious if ony it wasnt a "card" game rpg.
150a46 No.15194549
>>15177112
Yeah, it's more of a loss in both vision and technique than anything else.
Also pre-rendered graphics decrease load times and stutter quite a lot, with the drawback that you have to keep a single camera view, but is it so bad when you get to actually play the game on any shitty rig?
7d7ca5 No.15194634
>>15189618
I still can't forgive Capcom for not using static camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds for the Resident Evil 2 remake.
2176e1 No.15194641
>>15194634
play the original, it has static camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds
5c59ef No.15194783
>>15188623
>Ray tracing looks like shit
but of course
eb7d75 No.15194843
>>15173954
Definitely. I will never play indie shit because most of them just can't afford good artists.
An JRPG from the 90s actually had professional artists working on backgrounds for months. Indie shit tends to go for "muh gameplay" in detriment to everything else.
bca70d No.15194919
>>15189625
Far as I've heard from other anons, the Japanese version has similar audio issues. Not so much a bad dub than an annoying filter for the purpose of making the player as a character a viewer at a distance, or something, and I hear rumor that more in sync you are with Kalas with your responses to questions asked of you, the less filtered it sounds, or something.
495b4d No.15194972
>>15177372
>Linking to NeoFag
Slit your fucking wrist.
a41115 No.15194989
I vaguely remember hearing about some RPG or point n click(?) adventure gaym using prerendered backgrounds that was under development back in circa-2012.
Did anything come out of that or did I end up switching timelines again?
30bd13 No.15195317
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>15173954
This. Pre-rendered requires lots of work and masteries of composition, lighting, and overall design to make it work. Something near mythical in this day and age.
e9d658 No.15202537
>>15175915
I fucking love Scott's Robot models.
e9d658 No.15202544