Sprites/Quads/2d/3d - Why does it look different

Simple question.

If I render say a soldier into a set of animation frames I find that if I play the animated frames in a 2d blitz program they look basically the same as the rendered image (as you would expect). But when I display these images on a sprite/quad in 3d the quality seems to really degrade..the image becomes blocky and the colors look a bit off.

Why is that...and is there a way to stop it from happening?

Try Syntax Error's excellent library:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/config/spritecontrol/spritecontrol.htm

(Or see the Code Archives and look for skiracer's "Pixies" code.)

Hey thanks James 8-)

Matty, I beleive it's to do with the fact that 3D uses texels rather that pixels. Getting nice sharp 3D quads proved a right job until skidracer released his pixies code (which I incorporated into SpriteControl & SpriteMaster).

One thing to be aware of though ...
If your animation strip is longer than the screen width you may get corrupt animations. I believe its a DirectX limitation rather than a Blitz3D one.
Best thing to do is split the animation up into columns and rows like this:

|---|---|---|---|
|   |   |   |   |
|---|---|---|---|
|   |   |   |   |
|---|---|---|---|
|   |   |   |   |
|---|---|---|---|

thanks