Texel Splatting: Perspective-Stable 3D Pixel Art

TL;DR

This paper introduces texel splatting, a novel rendering technique for perspective-stable 3D pixel art that maintains pixel stability during camera movement by rendering scene geometry into a cubemap and splatting texels as world-space quads.

Contribution

The paper proposes texel splatting, a perspective-invariant rendering method that avoids grid snapping issues, enabling stable pixel art rendering in 3D scenes from a fixed viewpoint.

Findings

Texel splatting achieves perspective stability in 3D pixel art.

The method maintains pixel stability during camera translation and rotation.

Limitations include fixed origin view and disocclusion at probe boundaries.

Abstract

Rendering 3D scenes as pixel art requires that discrete pixels remain stable as the camera moves. Existing methods snap the camera to a grid. Under orthographic projection, this works: every pixel shifts by the same amount, and a single snap corrects all of them. Perspective breaks this. Pixels at different depths drift at different rates, and no single snap corrects all depths. Texel splatting avoids this entirely. Scene geometry is rendered into a cubemap from a fixed point in the world, and each texel is splatted to the screen as a world-space quad. Cubemap indexing gives rotation invariance. Grid-snapping the origin gives translation invariance. The primary limitation is that a fixed origin cannot see all geometry; disocclusion at probe boundaries remains an open tradeoff.