2.5D - but the other way around

NotAPirate

So far I'm enjoying AC a lot and making progress on my project, but I was wondering about an "inverted 2.5D" game. What do I mean by that?

• I want the walkable terrain to be a "live" 3D-rendered environment from one of the many vegetation engines/packages Unity offers (example)
• the actual characters as well as foreground objects would still be 2D

Is that possible? I've played around a little bit so far and haven't found a way as the "2d" mode in Unity doesn't jibe well with those packages. So my workaround would then be to use screenshots/videos as a background and import them. Not a dealbreaker by any means, but I just wanted to know whether there's an obvious way.

ChrisIceBox

If the scene itself uses 3D assets for its graphics, you'll want to make a 3D game. This involves setting the Settings Manager's "Camera perspective" field to 3D.

When you then use the Scene Manager, you'll then be able to use AC's 3D objects such as 3D Hotspots, cameras, etc. The workflow for scene creation would be the same as any other 3D game - see the tutorial here.

AC still supports the use of sprite-based, i.e. 2D, characters in 3D scenes. The only change you need to make is to replace their 2D physics components (i.e. Rigidbody 2D and Circle Collider 2D) with 3D equivalents (Rigidbody and Capsule Collider, or Character Controller). So long as the character still has a sprite child assigned, their sprite will still correctly face the camera in a 3D scene.

Foreground sprites too can be placed in a 3D scene. The only thing you need to consider is that anything interactive (i.e. Hotspots) needs to rely on 3D colliders, as opposed to 2D colliders. Other than that, this combination of 2D and 3D should work just fine.

NotAPirate

Okay thanks! Guess I need to watch the 3D tutorial now gets the large coffee mug