2D-assets in 3D-view

[Canyon_SKR]

Have you ever heard of a game made in 3D-view, using 2D-assets?
 
For example, where a character is animated in 2D, with one set of frames designated for all 360° angles of movement. Similarly to a 3D character, which can be controlled with a joystick, but the animation is drawn frame-by-frame, rather than animated using a rig.
 
The frames of the backround changes, the further or closer the character moves towards the the object in the backround, until it gets within the range of interaction. Just like how a 3D character, can move around in 3D space, but everything is distinctly hand-drawn, with the same level of details as the backround image was afar.
 
I am not referring to "point-and-click" games, which has 2D character move with a static backround in one fixed view. I´m also not referring to 2D character present in a 3D backround. Instead, I am referring to a game that both has 2D characters and 2D backrounds, but acting as if they were in 3D space with all 360° angles. In other words, 2D frames acting as if they were 3D objects, or at least creating the illusion of that. A game that will allow the player to go inside and explore the back rounds of, for example, classical hand-drawn Disney films using the third dimension, while still retaining the 2D element and excluding 3D object which creates a sense of detachement.
 
In summary, a game in the third dimension in all 360° angles, made exclusively using 2D assets that acts just like a 3D game using third-person perspective. The player is essentielly going to move around with full control over the character as in a Disney-film. You are playing a hand-drawn animated Disney-film in the third-person view with 2D characters, that is what I am trying to have said.
 
Have you ever heard of a game like that? Do you think it would be worth it to have 3D elements with the same quality as Disney´s classical feature-length movies, or is it just a over-complex process, whose quality can easily be matched using 3D graphics?

[TomGuycott]

It sounds like you are describing a very overly complex version of Doom style games, where instead of having a 3D environment with texture mapping you have every angle hand-drawn. Seems a bit impractical, but I might just have trouble visualizing it.

[Kriven]

I think it would be pretty resource intensive to build a game like this with a free-range camera.

[Canyon_SKR]

For example, this dog on this image from an animated movie will be able to move around this rock, go into the forest and see these polar bears from different angles, yet still in 2D with same color, whose shadows depends on the angle.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hFSQjKlHDJg/maxresdefault.jpg

Or, for example, this boy is able to move around the edges of the lake, and still see the girl, but from different angles, all in third-person view. All acrobatics present in 3D environment, is also possible in this 2D environemnt.

http://www.cornel1801.com/disney/Black-C...3/part.jpg

The closest thing already available that I know of would be this game, but it doesn´t have the character move around using all 360° angles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZLMaw93aJQ

Has something on this scale and level of quality, every been done before, and is it reasonable from an aesthetic viewpoint?

[Gors]

no

and no

it's easier to model the props in 3D and run a shader that mimicks 2D drawing.

---

The closest I know would be Time Gal or Dragon's Lair, but those are as much as a game as having to do a test with arbitrary answers

Additionally, Doom, Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem 3D all use fake 3D with 2D props to make the game, but it's nowhere near Disney quality of artstyle

[Kriven]

I don't even think this kind of thing would be possible, particularly not as a large scale project. All of the art assets needed to draw objects at different angles and different distances would be an overwhelming task for any studio.

[Canyon_SKR]

This is an example of a character in 360° angles I am talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqRHdH_4PK0&t=2m27s

Has it ever been attempted on a small scale, historically speaking?

[Koh]

Toy Story Racer on GBC

It's not real 3D, but simulated 3D by having continuous 2D images of the areas and required angles be displayed. The sprites have separate versions for distance.

[Canyon_SKR]

Toy Story Racer on GBC

Allow me to rephrase my question.

Has that been attempted on a small scale, with the same level of quality as a feature-length movie from Disney, historically speaking?

[TomGuycott]

It hasn't been attempted because it is simply not practical. If it is possible, it would probably take 10 console generations to finish a game with that many hand drawn animations, and the animators would probably quit because of how mindnumbingly monotonous that kind of project would be.

[Canyon_SKR]

Wouldn´t it yield an authentic appearance of an 2D animated movie, which could add to the experience of the game? It would certainly be unique, and is financially sustainable using drawing tablets.

[DarkGrievous7145]

taking the approach you're suggesting actualy sounds very expensive and tedious, and it's a known fact hand-draw perspective animation isn't always great-looking.

my approach to this kind of thing would be pre-rendering. (maybe some on-demand re-rendering stuff to avoid creating thousand or millions of texture atlases on disk) i have this INSANE idea to create a very next-gen feeling game with fancy effects, but sacrifice to disk space and/or memory what otherwise would stress the hell out of the GPU or CPU, effectively creating something like these over-rated FPS games with fancy shaders and crap, on something far back as Windows 95 or 98! Mainly just to show-off what proper optimization really could do. I don't doubt older hardware/software is indeed capable of more than we accredit if for. There are some noteworthy games that show what a true software developer can do with a primitive system. StarFox Adventures, for example. Graphics are pretty damn sweet, yet the game runs fine (except on emulators...)

If I'm reading what you're suggesting, though, it is crazy at best, and positively INSANE at worst. You're welcome to try this sort of thing, but I can promise you that it will not be fun. You'd need very large asset files/archives, and just for a small room, I could see this reaching the hundred of megs to a few gigabytes file sizes. Just to even handle the CPU/GPU/RAM load, you will constantly be swapping stuff in and out of memory. You'll need either a carefully defined panoramic image progression format, or several databases indicating which frames to switch to from which frames. The idea sounds cool, but you're suggesting something that will probably require next-next-next-next gen hardware and software to be remotely feasible. Economically, 3D games are actually already very expensive and borderline unsustainable. what you're suggesting is exponentially more so.

First word of advice: DON'T
Second word of advice: if not heeding my first one, this should be a side project you spend likely your entire life of free time making, and you better collect together as much money and human resources as you possibly can to make it happen.

If you insist, I guess no one can really stop you, but you might wish in the ends that you never thought of it.

[miyabi95_]

Mario Kart 64 is probably the best example I could think of for games, although it uses rendered images of 3D models for most of the sprites. I honestly like that aesthetic.

On a related note, Sonic Rush/Rush Adventure/Colors for the DS have my favorite aesthetic that's reverse of what we're currently talking about. (3D models in a 2D environment)

[DarkGrievous7145]

There are some fan-made 3d pokemon engines using the sprites in place of models

i think it's pretty cool, myself.

the idea i suggested actually is the same, except it'd be designed with the goal of mimicking an HD FPS (or any graphically stunning 3d game) without using the expensive live rendering of effects, and likely, even, character/object models.

i also recall seeing on some gamedev site/forum ages ago, some kind of thing that uses pre-rendering at various angles/poses to create the illusion of 3d objects, like trees or whatever. i'm guessing it was essentially the same as what we're already touching on, but there might have been some notable differences. My memory is too fuzzy to remember specifics, but it was intended as a trade-off for performance. it significantly increased the entity cap, since there wasn't all the rendering of hundreds or thousands of 3d trees, which is what they showcased in the demo video.

[Gors]

Wouldn´t it yield an authentic appearance of an 2D animated movie, which could add to the experience of the game? It would certainly be unique, and is financially sustainable using drawing tablets.

no, it would not

it would look like ass because of a very specific reason:

1- games account for all kinds of events and thus the animations must be simplified and only have the necessary.
2- having lots of drawn frames will over-specialize the animation and thus be extremely tedious and require way too many man hours for even 3 minutes of "gameplay".
3- enjoy paying like $500 for said 3 minutes of game

this being said, either you want a fully 3D game with a 2D shader, or you want pain and suffering of all the chinese subsidiary animators