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[CapnAmaricrunch]

So what are some games that used pre rendered graphics, do you think its viable today?

I'll start with the obvious Donkey Kong Country

I saw a video showing the original art, looked like an early pixar film. It then got downgraded to 16 bit low resolution for SNES.

picture the below image in a real time game

 

[Diddy X]

Is it just a 2d image on the background? I guess you cannot interact with it, what else is there to the tech, maybe Ori uses it I'm not sure.

 

[elliot5]

Early resident evil games did this with the environments. It's still viable, just lost favor as technology advanced.

 

[nkarafo]

I really like the look of pre-rendered sprites. DKC on SNES is the most known but Toy Story on Genesis is also great:

Neo-Geo also had some fine stuff like Blazing Star:

These are all limited by the low resolution of the old machines. I would love to see how good a modern game would look in this style.

 

[CapnAmaricrunch]

Yes another good example is RE

From my laymans understanding it allows for hyper high quality graphics with the downside of zero interactivity.

 

[Kimahri]

Pre rendered isn't something I miss, graphics are good enough these days, but I do miss the l8cked camera angles. Now it's all about putting you in the middle of it. Seeing things from the hero's viewpoint. Back then ever area was directed.

It was more like watching a movie. Every scene has been created with a purpose, and you could get some really cool and atmospheric camera angles. That shit has value. Just look at what happened to the visual appeal of the Tales series after they went for a free camera. Blergh

 

[nkarafo]

The RE examples are just static backgrounds though. It's basically a picture.

Animated pre-rendered sprites are far more interesting.

 

[CapnAmaricrunch]

A fighting game or platformer today using prerendered graphics can achieve literal photo realism, with everything in high res. The downside would be some static janky look if not done right.

 

[Myths]

Pretty much most of Square’s PS1 era. Of course it’s still viable, but there’s the ambitious aspect with respect to technological hardware advancements.

 

[Arioco]

It's too bad pre rendered graphics look so low rez and pixelated in our HD TVs. Fortunately AI upscaling can do wonders with them.

 

[CapnAmaricrunch]

If you have a fighting game with completely prerendered graphics like in the killer instinct series, you can use all the resources on the two characters, insane poly counts, ray tracing, perfect shadows, etc.

 

[CapnAmaricrunch]

It's too bad pre rendered graphics look so low rez and pixelated in our HD TVs. Fortunately AI upscaling can do wonders with them.

Also the original renders got a major downgrade from the source material due to the limitations of those old consoles.

 

[PleaseDontBanMe]

so u saw a video showing the original DK country art and decided not to show us

 

[elliot5]

The RE examples are just static backgrounds though. It's basically a picture.

Animated pre-rendered sprites are far more interesting.

It's the same thing but the keyframes of the animations are rendered and scaled down to a pixel resolution it can run in real time. 3D graphics rendered for high quality images (backgrounds or sprites) and a look that wouldn't be easy to recreate by hand.

 

[Fafalada]

So what are some games that used pre rendered graphics, do you think its viable today?

It's viable, but most of the original appeal got lost once we transitioned into rendering loads being primarily pixel limited. At that point pre-rendered doesn't add a ton to the scene complexity that can't also be done real-time.
That said - you can still do illumination models that are outside of real-time realm, or use hand-drawn art etc. so you can come up with interesting use-cases that still work, and plenty of games are still being made in some of those styles. Given the persisting popularity of isometric and other genres that aren't actually free-moving 3d camera, I'd say it remains viable.

With RT stack being broadly available now, I'd say an opportunity exists to do a 'just in time' pre-rendered models - ie. precompute them on demand, asynchronously rather than store it on disk. That could yield its own unique look, not be limited to pre-rendered static imagery (it can still change in realtime) and aren't stuck at specific resolution.

 

[RoadHazard]

There's no reason to do it anymore, consoles are powerful enough to render nearly photorealistic environments in real-time now. Using pre-rendered backgrounds would just make the game much more static and less interactive with very few upsides.

 

[Birdo]

Final Fantasy games still use pre-rendered cutscenes. Both FFXV and FFVII Remake have several.

 

[Cattlyst]

Stupid Invaders on Dreamcast and PC looked like a playable cartoon at the time. I remember it being very impressive, even though yeah it was just pre rendered sprites and static backgrounds. I imagine the tech has improved considerably these days but fully 3d can look as good as prerendered now so probably why the style/technique has fallen out of favour.

 

[RaySoft]

If you have a fighting game with completely prerendered graphics like in the killer instinct series, you can use all the resources on the two characters, insane poly counts, ray tracing, perfect shadows, etc.

I think understanding the lingo before throwing it around would be better...

 

[abel empire]

Well prerendered sprites or games arent dead yet as there are new technologies that make them more interactive like this one. It lights sprites using height maps or normal maps to make them interect with the games lighting.