3D-sprites introduction comes to end. Our goal is to bring in the world complex pre-rendered objects, which are hard to visualize by mesh (for example, trees, avatars etc.)

We have to show such an objects from a proper “view angle” to organically put them into a scene. Designers render some phases from different angles and mark them with angle numbers for these objects. The engine finds suitable phase and transforms it properly (size, rotation), then sprite is put into 3D-space.

This demo shows how to make “chrome balls” effect by a few phases (don’t forget to use ctrl-mouse). I couldn’t keep myself from writing micro-phisics code too ;)

• Spacebar — change ball container
• Enter — shake balls
• Mouse wheel (OR Up-Down arrows for Mac users) — change scale
• Drag mouse — rotate camera
• Ctrl + drag mouse — roll camera
• Q — hi/low render quality