Well I just thought about 3d models a little ... maybe some people want to think along or know anything I don''t!? Because textures on polygons are always compromises and the polygons keep getting smaller ... might some day a 3d photoshop application with animations replace 3d studio max? Shouldn''t it be possible to make a pixel based skeleton system for animations? A 3d brush engine could be used by artists and engines to (re)create the model with scripts rater than just load all the pixels. Wouldn''t it be interesting for per-pixel lighting? Or for more exact collision detection? Maybe there are pixel based 3d model formats already? Will the hardware of the not-so-distant future be able to deal with something like that? What are your thoughts?

i guess you should take a look at "voxel" ''s ;-).
its already been used in old 2.5d dosgames like shadow warrior or blood.

I thought you still have to think pixels on polygons there? No?

If I understand you correctly, there is a problem: Exactly how big is a "pixel" in relation to the model? Take a model comprised of "pixels" (or voxels, volume-based pixels) and zoom in on it. Now, watch all of those tiny voxels swell until one fills the screen. Do you simply pile more, ever-smaller voxels into it, and increase your memory usage exponentially? Keep going, until your voxels are conceptually the "size" of atoms, and your memory usage is bloated correspondingly.

It''s all a matter of relativity. You can construct a solid out of voxels that looks good from a certain distance, but get any closer and you need a higher resolution of voxels. Closer still, yet more voxels are necessary. There is no limit to how "close" you can get to the model (at least, until you hit the limits of mathematical precision in the machine), so theoretically you would need an infinitely detailed voxel representation.

Polygonal geometry is favored because it gives good approximations to a surface or a volume with a minimum of memory usage--less memory usage than most voxel representations, with far less computation involved, and better detail at low-voxel/polygon count levels. As hardware capability increases, more polygons representing a smaller fraction of the total surface to be approximated can be used, resulting in an ever-more-accurate approximation of the object, but this is a process whose limit approaches infinity. Theoretically, you can always refine detail to a more accurate representation of the surface, and will never get to a point where your polygonal approximation exactly represents a real-life object.

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Golem
Blender--The Gimp--Python--Lua--SDL
Nethack--Crawl--ADOM--Angband--Dungeondweller

Nurbs.

there are also some cartoon shader for 3d apps around ... so no need for an extra 2d bones model ...

tilesets games sprites
http://www.reinerstileset.de