Making games with pre rendered sprites/backgrounds

[Warmachine]

Hi folks, i've got a great original project idea i've had kicking around in my head for the last maybe 2 years. I'm definitely old school when it comes to my games, so i want the traditional side scrolling action/adventure platformer. I've gotten very good with 3D modeling/animation the last couple of years and am very interested in using pre rendered sprites/backdrops for it. I've tried other engines but can't get away from fusion lmao. Does anyone have any pointers as to what some good approaches would be to making and using backdrops/backgrounds? I'm a bit torn because i'm assuming tiles would still be the rule of thumb for efficiency but then again it seems like it would be harder to pump out stages the way i have them imagined with pre rendered tiles vs just making big maps and importing them into fusion.

[zip2kx]

Friday night at freddys (or whatever its called) was built entirely of prerendered things. If you google there's some interview where the author describes his process which was basically exporting everything to images and importing it in active objects.

[marbenx]

User digitalmind's current project in this thread in the WIP forum is also doing a lot of pre-rendered stuff, might be worthwhile asking them what their process is too. I'd imagine you'd start with a mixture of 'blocking' out platforms/obstacles on a separate layer to the graphics, and iterating on the graphics using lower-quality renders at first before you start spending time rendering higher quality stuff

[Warmachine]

Thanks for the replies guys!
@marbenx - i'll definitely be doing that! Thanks for the info dude.

[butterfingers]

@Warmachine

For backdrops you could just have the backdrop as one big rendered image, and the make your collision mask separate - done with tiles that are then hidden?

[Warmachine]

Thanks butterfingers i checked the thread that marbenx pointed me to and digitalmind got back at me describing the same thing. I just assumed it would cause some major memory caps when rendering out large image files and using them in fusion. Which for me has always been much easier. When i was working non stop on my Castlevania 3 remake i originally started with doing the full stage then dropping it in, but moved on to try out using tiles only. And while tiles only could prove more user friendly in terms of updating things on the fly, i always got better results doing the full scene. I just saved those files with individual layers in photoshop, that way if something didn't sit right or feel right/look right i could just adjust that piece and reimport it. I may be trying out the same with my original game idea. Worked before, i don't see why it couldn't now