3D AS BASE / PRERENDERED 3D

The closest I've had is just an idea: to create 3-D environments, then screenshot them and draw pixel art over them, and then use them with parallax mapping. I don't know if I'll ever do this, as I'm woefully inexperienced in 3D modeling XD but it was an idea I had.

I'm sure some day there'll be an RPG Maker where you can do everything in 3D and have it look nice.

I absolutely love that era of graphics. Unfortunately I have zero skill/knowledge in 3D programming.

I did look up that Blender program a few weeks ago, though, after looking again at the screenshots of The Way. They reminded me so much of FF VII that I was inspired to google 3D graphics engines... and then I never went anywhere else with it.

I have a lot of interest in this style, since I have so much nostalgia for it. I'm planning to use it for a few of my (far) future RPG projects. I'm learning Unity 3D next term in school, so I'll probably be attempting to mess around with this sort of stuff and see what kind of work needs to go into it.

The game: Siestarena that I submitted to that indie contest awhile back uses 3D prerender backgrounds and 2D sprites. Though the backgrounds were rushed in about a week. I think it showcases that it can be done on rpgmaker reliably well.

The Way used prerendered backgrounds for most outdoor areas using some old program called Bryce. I suspect since Bryce was designed for landscaping so there wasn't much Lun could do when it came to interiors (or just time constraints). But it's pretty amazing that an RM game that is complete actually had that + duel systems and such.

In some ways I find 3D backgrounds to be a faster workflow than tilesets because it has the pro of repeatable elements and yet you can turn them into different angles making a thousand possibilities for say a single barrel you only made once. You do have to plan it out before making them though. But in essence it kind of teaches you to worry about pass-abilities first than the map's look. Still the con is you actually have to learn 3D modeling, texturing, and lighting which can take some time.

here's what 2 maps look like before a render: jail, restarant

I basically gave it to a modeller friend who knew nothing about rpgmaker or even how top down angles worked, so I gave him really quick images that illustrated important points in big capital letters

and here's what they look like after: jail, restarant

After I get a modeled scene I texture, light it then render it. The idea behind the workflow is that I never have to go back to the 3D program after doing 1 or 2 renders since everything is lined up to the grid I gave to the modeller. These backgrounds ended up being pretty basic, but this project was mostly a learning experience in perfecting a pipeline.

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As for Squaresoft themselves back in the ps1 hey day, they did something similar except with perspective and camera angles. It seems they would get a 2D artist to draw every background in good perspective then just model over it to the layout.




Some details are changed or left out, but the point was there was a visual plan that could be described to anyone on the team without having to do anything beyond a line sketch. Keep in mind Squaresoft pumped out FF7,FF8, and FF9 in a span of like 3 years. So it was quite fast in the early 3D era.

By the time they got to FF9 the process became more streamlined and stretched out. They would have the layouts be 3D modeled with the character models in there as well but then get another guy to actually add detail/texture/light. It's important to note the T-posed character models as they used them to test the scale of the scene.

Layout line mockup
Model render
Final pass

Sheet with specs

You can find more about FF9's art here. But basically they had more people working on this and even having most of development in hawaii (actually in the NES days it was quite common for square to move the development team to the US to work with NASIR when his work visa expired...). The reason why I bring that up is because the stretch out in pipeline meant the dev team was getting bigger and they were probably outsourcing to freelancers.

I guess to summarize this it really helps to have multiple people do 3D backgrounds and get them done ASAP. Even if it's just 2 people it's good to take advantage of the fact that things can be interchanged before it outputs to a 2D background. I don't really have much else to talk about other than that though. I really do adore ps1 era backgrounds because there's a lot of craft and charm into them that you kind of don't get from the more ingame stuff. Mainly because 3D ingame tends to base itself off general concept art as opposed to an illustrator having direct control over each shot like a storyboard.

some ff7 backgrounds

I atempted something like this, more in the fashion of saga frontier 2 (hand draw backgrounds)
There is a yami script that let you use images as layers with transparency (like a photoshop layered image, and some layer effects for day/night lightning)

You are probably better off not using RPG Maker if you want the full package of camera angles, pixel movement, characters that stay in perspective (kinda), and collisions that are mapped to an image. But you can make organic looking maps.... in the places you don't move around in with the grid. I think I just learned that doing it tiles is easy and straightforward and what RPG Maker was sorta still meant for.