Skip to the guide
Pixx Suite

Pixx Suite · Beginner

Pixx Flow — pipelines, runs and teams

Map your pipeline across the Pixx apps, run each job through it, hand results from app to app with one click, work with a team and see where the time goes.

#What Flow is

Flow is the map of how your work moves between the Pixx apps. A flow is a board of steps — each step is done in one app — joined by links that show what one app hands to the next: a sprite sheet, a tilemap, a font, a UI frame, a dialogue, a sound. A run is one job through a flow ("Knight v1", "Goblin", "Level 3"). Each step of a run has a status, a person, a due date, its results and its comments.

Find it at pixxsuite.com/flow, or from Flow in the menu of the Pixx Suite site and in every app's account menu.

#Who can use Flow

Flow is part of every plan that covers at least 2 apps:

  • À la carte with 2 or more apps.
  • Starter and Professional once you've picked at least 2 apps, and Unlimited (every app).
  • The 14-day free trial counts, and so do complimentary plans.

Without such a plan, the Flow page shows a one-minute guided tour of an example flow instead. It ends with Start your 14-day trial, which opens the pricing page with the example's apps already picked.

#Your first flow in 3 questions

Right after you start a plan, Flow offers to build an example flow for you (you can also open it any time from the Flow page: Build an example flow). It asks three things, one per screen:

  1. Your main purpose — a game character, a level or world, a dialogue or cutscene, sound and music, fonts and UI, a store page and marketing, or just exploring.
  2. Where your work should end up — a game engine (then which one: Godot, Unity, GameMaker, Phaser, LÖVE or Defold), a store or social, a portfolio or print, or not sure yet.
  3. Solo or with others — with a team you can name it and invite people right there. Their steps stay assigned to you until they join.

You then see a preview. It only uses apps in your plan, and every link is one the apps can really make. If one more app would complete the pipeline, you see a line like "Add Pixxeta to add hitboxes and pivots" that opens My Plan — never more than two. Press Create flow; with Start the first run ticked, you land on its first run straight away.

#How to make a flow from a template

  1. On the Flow page, press New flow.
  2. Pick a template (game character, game level, dialogue scene, launch kit, sound pack, font + UI, tileset from a photo) or Blank flow.
  3. Choose where it lives: Personal (only you) or one of your teams.
  4. Change anything on the board. Every change saves by itself.

#How to edit a flow

  • Add a step: click an app in the list on the left. It is added after the selected step and linked to it when the two apps fit. You can also drag an app onto the board.
  • Link two steps: drag from a step's right-hand dot onto the next step. If the apps can hand over more than one kind of thing, you choose which. If they can't hand anything to each other, Flow tells you why (for example "Pixxune sends sounds; Pixxivi opens frames, images, sheets or palettes").
  • What's next?: select a step to see the apps that usually come after it, and add one with a click.
  • Name, note, quality check: select a step to rename it, add a note for whoever does it, or turn on a quality check.
  • Undo / redo: Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z. Delete removes the selected step or link; the arrow keys move a step.
  • Tidy lays the board out left to right. On a phone, the List view shows the steps in order with their links — add, link and remove from there.

#How to run a flow

  1. Open a flow and press Start a run. Give the run a name.
  2. Click a step to open its panel: set its status, assign it, give it a due date.
  3. Press Open in and the app's name (for example Open in Pixxeta). The app opens signed in, with the newest result of the step before already loaded.
  4. In the app, a Flow chip in the top bar shows which run and step you are on. When you are done, use Send result to Flow. The result is attached to the step, and you can mark the step done.

Runs have three views: Map, Board (To do / Doing / Needs re-run / Done columns) and List. Each result shows what it was made from, so you can follow a character from its first sketch to the engine.

#Needs re-run

If an earlier step sends a newer result after later steps were finished, those later steps change to Needs re-run, so nobody ships hitboxes for an old animation.

#Quality checks

A step with a quality check (Pixxoku's rules: Engine essentials, Game-ready, Retro strict or Everything) can only be marked Done once its newest result passes. In the step panel, press Check the newest result. Warnings and errors block it; hints don't.

#How to work with a team

  1. On the Flow page, press New team, or create one in the 3-question wizard.
  2. Invite people by email. The link works for 14 days; they can join with an existing Pixx account or a new one (Flow needs a plan with 2+ apps for them too — the invite waits while they start a trial).
  3. Move flows into the team with the Personal / Team menu at the top of the editor.

Everyone in a team is equal: anyone can edit its flows, start runs, take or assign any step, invite people and remove them. There are no owners or roles; instead every change is listed in the team's Activity. Anyone can leave at any time; when the last person leaves, the team and its flows and runs are deleted.

#Emails

Flow emails you when someone assigns you a step, when your step becomes ready, and when someone comments on your step. Turn each one off under Email me on the Flow page.

#Reports

Reports on the Flow page shows where the time goes: the total time in your runs, the time per step across runs (the top bar is your bottleneck), each run against the average of its flow, and a Download CSV button. Time counts while an app is open on a step — the same time tracking as your dashboard, which you can turn off there.

#Troubleshooting

  • I only see a tour. Your plan covers fewer than 2 apps, or you are signed out. Sign in, or add an app in My Plan.
  • "Open in …" says the app is not in my plan. Flow shows steps for any app, but you can only work in the apps your plan includes. Add the app in My Plan, or assign the step to someone who has it.
  • I can't assign someone. They need to be in the team, and their plan must include Flow.
  • A result says "deleted by its maker". The person who made it removed it from their library. Ask them to send it again.
  • Done is greyed out. The step has a quality check that hasn't passed yet.