Animated background using Libgdx

Question

I'm creating a UI system for an android game that will have a large (up to 4096x4096) background area in which menus can be placed anywhere within that screen and a camera will fly to that location when a different menu is needed. Instead of having a large static image, I'd like to be able to animate this slightly. What I'd like to know is how to do this efficiently without lagging up the device. These are the methods I've come up with so far, but maybe there is something better..

1) Have 3 separate 4096x4096 static layers for the background, 1 is the sky, one is the terrain, one is things like clouds and trees. Each layer is placed on top of each other with a slight difference in Z space to give a little parallax effect when the camera moves.

2) Have a large stationary background image, with a layer on top of that with individual specific sprites of clouds, trees and other things that should be animated. I think this might be the most efficient route, as I can choose not to animate parts that are not in view, but it will also limit re-usability as every different object will have to be placed manually in space. My goal is to be able to simply change the assets and be able to have a whole new game.

3) Have 1 large background layer with several frames that plays almost like a video. I feel like this will be the worst on performance(loading several 4096x4096 frames and drawing a different one 30 times a second), but would give me the scene exactly how I want it directly out of After Effects. I doubt this one is even feasible, not just because of the drawing but storage space on android devices just for the menu UI wouldn't allow for several 6MB frames.

Are any of these in the right direction? I have seen a few similar questions asked but none fit close enough to what I needed(A large, moving background that isn't made of tiles).

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

As far as your question is tagged for Android, I would recommend the 2nd solution.

The main reason is that solution #1 and #3 involve loading numerous 4096x4096 textures. Quick calcultation: three 32bit textures with such resolution would use at least 200MB of Video RAM. It means that you can immediatly discard a lot of android devices.

On the other hand, the solution #2 would involve only two big textures: a large stationary background image, and a texture atlas containing specific sprites of clouds, trees... This solution is really more memory friendly, and will lead to the same aestetic output.

TL;DR: the 3 solutions would work great but only the #2 would fit an embedded device