Level Backgrounds

When we came up with the backgrounds, we originally wanted to paint them but we wasn't sure how we were going to match the length of each level without tiling. Our next idea was to model the background elements so we could still keep the triangulated look. Due to the large sizes of the meshs, we came across a problem with lightmapping, the light maps would stretch across the background meshes giving blurred shadows. To counter this we tried splitting the meshes into smaller pieces (a technique we had to use on some of the larger terrain pieces) but once again the pieces were still too large and could not be made smaller without adding more geometry, which is something we wanted to avoid because of the nature of the triangulated effect.

We solved our problem by rendering each background element separately as a layered psd using mentalray. I was then able to take these renders into Photoshop, these can then be saved off with an alpha channel and applied to 3d planes within Unity. Taking these into Photoshop instead of using the 3D models allowed me to have much more control over colours and giving slight false depth.

I had to match the shadow direction and colour the pieces accordingly to match the unity lighting as close as possible. This allowed me to take each piece into Photoshop and fade them based on the false distance.
The effect i used was to place a blue overlay over the each piece, the closer elements were set to 25% opacity while the far element were set to 50%.

I think this effect worked nicely but not 100% sure it translated as well in game, i think the far background could of been a little more faded. As i thought the colour difference wasn't as noticable in game as it was in Photoshop. Also in some parts of the Forest level, the platforms assets colour look too similar to the background so sometimes blends in. Mostly minor fixes so should hopefully be sorted before the grad show. 

You can see an example of this below: