Pre-rendered backgrounds? (Resident Evil style)

Development Rendering
1

Hi, I’m guessing the Rendering sub-forum is the right place to ask about this, isn’t it?

I’m working on a “Playstation era” inspired project and one of the features I’m trying to implement are pre-rendered backgrounds.
I’ve set up static camera angles and made a low-poly environment blocking for the character to move in, but I’m not sure how to overlay an image for the background.
I thought about making a 2D widget, then somehow making the camera render the character model and other desired elements on top of it, but there’s probably a better way to get this to work.

Does anyone know how to achieve this effect in Unreal 4? Thanks in advance for the help!

2

You have to actually build the scene, with real assets. Then place the cameras and your character can move through it.

I guess you could do it somehow with pictures, but to make those pictures you would have to construct the scene, so why not just use the actual scene?

3

Well, cause I’m going for a stylized look and for the backgrounds I was going to mix real photos with hand-painted stuff.

4

You can’t have a character moving in a real photo. The objects, walls, floors, and such in the real photo would be non-existent to the character in terms of motion and space. It needs to be blocked out, or built from meshes placed in the scene, in order that the character is capable of moving through it. I’m certain that’s how the original Resident Evil was done, yet perhaps with some pre-rendered background areas that were inaccessible to the character or probably had a different graphical look so they appeared to be more photo-like and detailed until the character enters those areas.

Photos and illustrations can be applied in other ways, such as for paintings, textures / materials, and other objects in the scene. One example would be, as in Resident Evil games, picking up a file or folder or something, and upon opening it, it shows a picture(s) of other characters and places / monsters. Having a stationary camera that tracks the player in real-time is another one, where the camera is in a certain position and swivels when the character is moving through a room.

5

Yeah, of course, I know that there needs to be a level blocking in the first place to restrict where the player can go and move within the screen space. I have the level blocking all done, the photos would like the “peel” over it. Still, thanks for the help!

6

I don’t understand how photos would be placed as an overlay to the blocked out level. I wasn’t trying to imply that the idea is bad or undoable entirely, but that how I understand the Resident Evil games because I played lots of them, is I don’t recall a photo or photo-real overlay on the entire scene. The textures and details in the games, even the older ones, is aiming at a sense of photo-realism at least. The issue I see with that concept of creating it is making photo-real overlays which match the blocked-out (hate that term) scene with exactitude. Otherwise it’ll appear really disorienting and mishmashed.