A tour of Pixor

Four steps take a 3D model to animated pixel-art sprite sheets, then Export writes the files. These are pictures of the real app; click one to see it full size.

  1. Scene
  2. Action
  3. Style
  4. Asset
  5. Export

1. Scene

Open a model, then set up how it is seen. Every side your game needs is a camera, and they all share one pixel scale, so a whole game’s sprites match.

The Scene step in Pixor
  • Import glTF, FBX (Mixamo as it is), OBJ, MagicaVoxel .vox, pictures
  • Cameras: one per side, or a ring of 4, 8 or 16 round the model
  • Views ready made: side, three-quarter, isometric, top-down
  • Lights, pivot and pixels per metre, kept in the project
A camera in the Inspector
A camera in the Inspector
The Outliner: parts, cameras, lights
The Outliner: parts, cameras, lights

2. Action

Choose what moves: the model’s own animations, or motions Pixor adds (spin, bob, swing). The sheet gets a row for every action and side.

The Action step in Pixor
  • Every clip of the model, played and trimmed on a timeline
  • Motions for props: spin, bob, swing, pulse
  • Root motion kept in place, its offset written for your engine
  • Smart frames: the poses that matter, each held as long as it should be

3. Style

Choose the look. A look is a Style graph: light bands, outlines, palette and clean-up, each a node you can change. Start from a preset and save it as a kit for the next model.

The Style step in Pixor
  • Presets: selective outline, clean, retro, flat, wireframe
  • Light bands and hue-shifted ramps, palettes (Lospec .hex, .gpl)
  • Lines where a pixel artist would draw them
  • What you see in the 2D View is exactly what is exported
The Style graph of the default look
The Style graph of the default look

4. Asset

Choose what is written: the Asset graph turns the sprites into sheets and files. One PNG, or a sheet per action, JSON, Aseprite files, Godot SpriteFrames, GIFs…

The Asset step in Pixor
  • Sheets laid out by grid or packed, one row per action and side
  • JSON, Aseprite (tags and helper layers), Godot SpriteFrames
  • GIF, APNG, video, normal and depth maps, palettes
  • Every output a node: add, remove or rewire them
The Asset graph: sprites, arrange, sheet, PNG
The Asset graph: sprites, arrange, sheet, PNG

Then: Export

The Export window writes every file the Asset step makes into a folder you choose, exactly as the command line would, so a build script gives the same files.

The Export step in Pixor
  • Choose a pipeline and a folder, see the files before they are written
  • pxr render does the same from a script, for a whole folder of models

What comes out

Animated pixel art, every frame from every side, with one pixel scale and one pivot. These came out of the steps above, from models in the free library.

A goblin walking, from all 8 sides
A walk, 8 sides
A chest opening
A windmill turning

One model, four looks

The clean look
clean
The retro4 look
retro, 4 shades
The flat look
flat
The selective outline look
selective outline

How each pixel is decided, stage by stage: how it works.

Try the same steps on your own model, free in your browser, or get the full version.

Try in browser Get Pixor