Sprite

Keywords: Viewaligned Quad

The most basic tool of a vfx artist. In it’s simplest form it’s a camera facing quad with a texture applied to it. There are countless variations to this with different alignment options but they tend to fall under other categories like Billboards.

Sprites are what build up most of the effects we create. A single sprite is often not very impressive, but when several are used together they can fake many volumetric phenomena.

Original definition of a sprite:

''In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional bitmap that is integrated into a larger scene. ''Originally sprites referred to independent objects that are composited together, by hardware, with other elements such as a background. This occurs as each scan line is prepared for the video output device, such as a CRT, without involvement of the main CPU and without the need for a full-screen frame buffer.[1 ]

These days however, VFX artists are one of the few art disciplines that still use sprites. The definition is slightly different for us. It is a quad that always aligns to the camera. It can display various content, like textures from a texture atlas.