Axis Aligned Billboards

“Mariokart billboards” are a specific type of axis aligned billboards which represent fake 3D objects, the kind of 2.5D that Mariokart on the Super Nintendo used with its Mode 7 trickery.

The idea is that you take a texture like this leaf:

And the billboards show a different angle depending on the angle of view.

Useless with today’s hardware you say? Not so! The technique allows you to render tens or hundreds of thousands of particles as a huge cloud of debris which looks 3D from a distance, giving cool explosions which work on even the most modest hardware:

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Or flip the axis 90 degrees for cartoon rain:

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Or just have oldskool sprites that animate as well as rotate:

Get the code for particle systems, billboards and the generator tool here