Pixel Ice Rink

1. A real 3D scene. Boxes, cones and extruded shapes in three.js. Each player is a rig of about 16 boxes, posed every frame: two-bone IK places the legs on a skating stride and the arms on the stick.
2. Rendered small. An orthographic camera at an isometric angle draws into a target of about 480×300 pixels with no anti-aliasing. The camera snaps to whole pixels, so nothing that stands still shimmers.
3. Hard light. One sun (or moon) with a hard-edged shadow map; lamps on posts at dusk and night.
4. Outlines. Where a pixel stands more than half a metre in front of its neighbour in the depth buffer, it is darkened. That keeps small players readable.
5. A fixed palette. Every pixel takes the nearest of 42 winter colours, measured in OKLab (with an optional light 4×4 ordered dither first).
6. Scaled up whole. Each small pixel becomes an exact block of screen pixels.
7. The ice. Every blade that glides writes a scratch into a texture; hockey stops throw spray and gouge it. The resurfacer wipes the marks and leaves wet ice, which mirrors the scene (a second, flipped render).

Switch to Raw 3D to see the same scene before steps 2 to 6.