Hi,
@digimByte: Not sure that it's such a a clear cut case. Making sprite animation based on pre made renders has some exceptional benefits that 2.5D games with real low poly will never be able to come close in terms of visual quality.
-- total freedom of rendering quality ( you don't rely on Unity rendering engine for materials, shadows and effects)
-- No aliasing of meshes for the various parts
-- Totally awesome outlines, that are simply impossible to get using shaders.
-- Less drawcalls, meaning exceptional performances on mobile.
With sprites, you can basically achieve incredible visuals. Yes it's very limited in terms of "3d" movements and freedom, but if done well, it will work just fine for the purpose of the game.
I have built a ipad application some time ago relying heavily on pre rendering sprites, and while I agree this is a lot more complex, expensive and difficult to handle, the result is something that would be impossible to achieve with just the Unity rendering engine, simply impossible. This app runs perfectly on iPad first generation ( a real challenge indeed)
http://www.kakimediadesign.com/2011/05/applis-ipad-cfm/00:14 -- this is a real mesh: we struggled for days to compromise on the accuracy, rendering, ipad perfs, etc etc for a mediocre result in the end really... It can get a lot better, but at what cost really and for what benefit.
00:27 -- sprite based set of anims composed together to allow for some dynamics. Perfect blend between the purpose of the page and the visual quality, this type of render can not be achieved with Unity rendering engine ( no shadows, no smooth material shader lighting, etc etc). And with some clever coding (
) it can still be very interactive indeed
00:49 -- This engine is sprite based rendering in hd, the engine is all there with incredible details, difficult to implement because of memory issues, but visually stunning.
So it's really a matter of requirements, if the viewpoing over a model allow for sprites, you will get better results, else you will have to compromise on rendering and accuracy of the model to allow for real time rendering.
Bye,
Jean