How do I make a 3D parallax background - Within a topdown 3D game.

Imagine using the UE4 Top Down Template.
You’re in space and you need a parallax effect to give the feeling of movement through the stars.
The background itself can be in 2D or 3D, whichever is easiest, as long as it moves when the player moves to give that effect.
Can you point me in the direction of finding the answer or provide a tip here? I don’t mind any legwork. If you can give me a direction I can probably find the answer on my own.

Please help if possible.

Thank you!

When mentioning the top-down template I am interpreting this to mean that the player character / spaceship will move largely on a 2D plane (the floor of the dungeon in your typical top-down dungeon crawler), if this is the case then you could:

  1. Track player X and Y position in the world.
  2. From these values or from player itself, get movement velocity.
  3. Create multiple layers of visual background. This can be done using flat textures or 3D scenery.
  4. Move the scenery in the opposite direction of the player movement corresponding to the movement velocity.
  5. The scenery close to the player should move fastest, the scenery furthest back should move the slowest.

Again there are multiple ways of getting this to work, but I think a good place to start is simply multiple planes in front of each other that each contains textures of stars and has transparency where there aren’t stars (to show the next plane behind it).

Then tweak the individual planes movement speed and art style until you have something that conveys the scale and experience you want to achieve.

You can move not the planes, but only materials using Padding.