In some older video games, billboarding seemed like a cheap workaround for low poly restrictions. I can't remember any particular title as an example, but I do remember seeing scenery objects like trees and crowds of people projected as billboards, but in most cases, it was obviously an attempt to be realistic, even though the high amount of detail in the images in combination with alpha blending went against the grain of its low poly 3d environment.



Some games, however, were quite successful in substituting 3d models with multi-angle animated sprites, as seen in many FPS games like Quake, DOOM, Duke 3D, Wolfenstein 3D, etc., and in my opinion, those video games had really integrated those graphics well to create a unified 'composition' (if I can call a video game a composition).



However, in neither case (IMO) can we really call the examples "pixel art". But let's not get into a debate about what constitutes pixel art or discuss the methods employed by the artists of those games. In this thread, I'm interested in discussing the ways that contemporary artists EMBRACE restrictions and actually use pixel art in 3D graphics. The first example that comes to mind (for me, anyway) would be Minecraft, which uses low poly models in a voxel environment and pixel textures. Minecraft really doesn't use a lot of billboarding (except for dropped items that aren't blocks) but it renders pixels in some quite interesting ways.



One example of pixel art embracing sprites would be Infiniminer; the playable characters are rendered as animated 2d sprites with a front and back (probably textured quads with alpha blending).





What do you think about this application of pixel art? Do you think that using reminiscent, "8-bit" graphics in spite of modern rendering capabilities is quaint or creative? When does it cross the line? Share your thoughts and post more examples, if you know of any!