#What you'll learn

How a Pixxevi scene is built: layers, depth bands and the draw order.
How to shape any effect with its Look, Direction, Ground, Band and Shape & options settings.
How Blend modes, Time of day and Colour grade & light change the whole picture.
How to build your own weather overlay from scratch instead of starting from a preset.
Which export format to pick for a game, a video or a GIF, and how to hand the loop to other Pixx apps.

#Before you start

You've made a first loop with the Beginner guide: picking a preset, playing it and exporting a GIF.
You need a plan that includes Pixxevi. Saving to the cloud and Send to App need you to be signed in.
Optional: a screenshot of your own game level, to preview weather on top of it.

In Layers, delete the layers you don't need (select one, press Delete), or start from a Weather preset, which is transparent already.
Click + and pick a base effect, for example Rain or Snow. Use the search box in the Add a layer dialog to find effects by name.
Set its Depth to Far. Far layers are small, slow and faint.
Click + again, add the same effect, and set it to Near. Raise its Size a little.
Add a third layer such as Fog or Mist for atmosphere, and lower its Opacity.
Set Preview on to Image to see the overlay over your own level art. The picture is only for previewing and is never exported.

Select the layer. Its settings open on the right.
Under Look, set Density (how many particles), Speed (whole loops per animation, 1× to 8×), Size and Opacity.
Some effects add extra sliders here: Sway (side-to-side drift), Roam (how far fireflies and motes wander), Softness steps (fog banding) or Sky flash (lightning brightening the sky).
Drag the Direction / wind dial to slant rain or snow, from −75° to 75°. Flip mirrors the angle.
Effects that hit the ground show a Ground section: move the Ground line and tick Splashes on the ground where offered.
Effects that live in a strip of the picture (fog, clouds, aurora, fireflies, stars and more) show a Band section with Top and Bottom.
Shape & options holds the effect's own choices, for example the Kind of a sky body (Sun, Moon, Blood moon, Twin moons, Ringed planet, Eclipse, Black hole) or how a silhouette is lit.

Select a glowing layer such as Embers, Sparks or Fireflies.
In the layer settings, set Blend to Add (glow) or Screen. Bright pixels now light up what's behind them.
Use Multiply for shadowy layers (smoke, toxic cloud) and Overlay, Lighten or Darken for subtler mixes.
Post effects (Heat shimmer, Glitch) have no blend setting: they rework everything drawn below them in the list.

In Scene on the left, pick Time of day: As is, Dawn, Day, Dusk or Night.
Open Colour grade & light. Pick a Tint colour and raise Tint amount for an overall colour cast.
Adjust Brightness, Contrast and Saturation.
Under Glow from, choose Below, Above, Left or Right, then set Glow colour and Glow strength, for example orange from below for a lava field.
Click Reset grade to start over.

Select the layer and scroll to Colours.
Click a swatch to change it. Keep the darkest colour on the left and the brightest on the right.
Click + to add a colour.
Or pick a ready-made palette from the dropdown next to the swatches. It's spread across the layer's colours.
To use a palette you made in another app, click Library and open it: it recolours the selected layer only.

Select the layer.
Press R or click the re-roll button in Seed to get a new pattern.
To get a pattern back later, note the Seed number and type it in again. The same seed always gives the same pattern.
On a biome scene, Randomise biome gives a whole new variation of the place (other shapes, sun position and props).

Start from a Weather preset such as light rain.
Make sure you have a Far, a Mid and a Near rain layer.
Set W and H to your game's screen size divided by its pixel scale (for example 320 × 180), Frames to 24 and FPS to 12.
Export with Format set to Parallax layers and Background set to Transparent. You get one sheet per depth band plus a JSON file, ready to scroll at different speeds in your engine.

Pick a Biomes preset, then click Parallax scroll so the scenery slides sideways.
Raise Frames for a longer loop (up to 240) and pick a matching FPS.
Export APNG or WebP to keep soft fog and glows, with Scale at 4× or more for a sharp video.

In Pixxori, export or send a picture of your level, and set Preview on to Image in Pixxevi to compose weather over it.
When the loop looks right, open Send to App and send As a sprite sheet to Pixxizi to package it for your engine, or The loop (frames) to Pixxifo for a GIF.
In Flow, put these apps in one map so each step opens with the previous result loaded.

Space play / pause · ← / → step one frame · Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo / redo (Ctrl+Shift+Z also redoes).
Ctrl+D duplicates the layer, Delete removes it, R re-rolls it, 0 fits the view, Ctrl+S opens Export.
Drag layers in the list to reorder them; the top of the list is drawn in front.
A layer copy made with Ctrl+D gets a new seed, so two copies never move in lockstep.
The footer warns in red when one frame takes over about 25 ms to draw or the scene has over 12,000 particles; lower Density on the busiest layer.
Frames per loop: 2 to 240. FPS: 1 to 60. Canvas: up to 480 × 480.

The loop "jumps" when it repeats. Check the loop seam score in the footer; around 1× is perfect. Turn on Seam check to watch the wrap slowly. Very low frame counts make every step bigger, so try more Frames.
Rain doesn't splash. Not every effect has splashes. Look for Splashes on the ground in the Ground section of rain-type layers and move the Ground line to your floor.
A palette from the Library only changed one layer. That's by design: it recolours the selected layer. Select the next layer and open the palette again.
"Effects only" isn't offered in Export. It only appears when the scene has scenery layers (sky, silhouettes, ground, sea, sun and moons).
The exported GIF looks harsher than the preview. GIF has at most 256 colours and on/off transparency. Use APNG, WebP or a Sprite sheet, or choose Bake the preview colour.