I’ve been playing a lot of pre-rendered RPGs lately, think Baulder’s Gate, PoE ect.
I’m feeling in the mood to do a pre-rendered art project, and I’ve been looking into dynamic lighting in pre-rendered backgrounds.
Pillars of Eternity from what I understand has dynamic shadows from the 3d elements to the background, and surface lighting but the backgrounds shadows and AO are pre-baked.
I’m thinking of being more modular with the level design and content and try push for dynamic shadows on the environment side.
Here’s a video i found hightlighting more or less what i would like to achieve, from the lighting side of things;
I’d like to avoid using psuedo 3d models to occlude light and cast onto the 2d background, and just do it all in 2d.
Now i’m pretty savvy with this stuff, so i’m not looking for a comprehensive how to, just a general nudge in the right direction, i’ve already done some assuming already and figured i’d need a object/world space normal, depth and height information from my 3d software, it’s what i do with the information on the shader/material level that i’m a bit lost on.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
-Joel