Pixxexa — Intermediate

#What you'll learn

• How a Pixxexa texture is built: a material's layers, its colour ramp and its overlays.
• How to control colours, dithering, light shading and see-through areas.
• How to mask a layer so it only shows in patches.
• How to animate a texture so it loops seamlessly.
• How to turn your own images into tiles and make transition tiles between two textures.

#Before you start

• You've picked a material, added an overlay and exported a tile in the Beginner guide.
• You need a plan that includes Pixxexa.
• Optional: a palette from Pixxulo to match your game's colours.

#How-tos

#How to set up the colour ramp

1. Every layer turns its pattern into colours using a ramp, from dark on the left to light on the right. Select a layer and open its Colour section.
2. Click a swatch to change it, or Add a colour. A ramp needs at least 2 colours.
3. Use Use colours from a suite palette to fill the ramp from a ready-made palette, and the Colours number to choose how many colours to take from it.
4. Use Ramp from a biome… for a hue-shifted ramp from one of the 50 biome palettes: cool shadows, warm or cold highlights.
5. To use your own palette, click Library and open a palette: it replaces the ramp, sorted from dark to light.

#How to control dithering and shading

1. In a layer's Colour section, set Dither to none, 2×2, 4×4 or 8×8, then Dither amount. Dithering mixes neighbouring ramp colours in a pattern instead of a hard step.
2. Raise Light shading to give the surface relief, and set Light angle for where the light comes from.
3. On the material panel, the Light and Dither menus set these for the whole material at once.

#How to make parts see-through

1. Raise See-through below on a layer. The darkest part of its pattern, up to that amount, becomes transparent.
2. Use it for detail layers that sit over another texture: grass tufts, cracks, puddles.
3. Tick Invert to flip the pattern first, so the light parts become the see-through ones instead.

#How to mask a layer into patches

1. Select a layer and open Mask.
2. Choose a pattern from the menu (for example Mask: noise). The layer now only shows where that pattern is high.
3. Set Coverage (how much of the tile it covers) and Softness (how gradual the edge is). Some masks have Mask scale.
4. Tick Invert to swap where it shows, and Re-roll mask for a new arrangement.

#How to work with layers

1. In Layers, click + to add a generator (a pattern) or an operator (blur, emboss, levels…). An operator reworks the result of the layers drawn before it.
2. Each layer has Blend and Opacity. Reorder with the arrows, hide with the eye, delete with the bin.
3. Re-roll layer gives one layer a new seed without changing the others.
4. Before editing a material's layers by hand, click Detach so your edits aren't replaced when you move the material's sliders. Reset material returns to the material's own settings.

#How to animate a texture

1. Select the recipe and open Animation.
2. Use Scroll across and Scroll down (whole tiles per loop, −4 to 4) for flowing water or drifting clouds.
3. Tick Boil (morph and back) for bubbling lava or swamp water.
4. Set Colour cycling (whole turns of the ramp per loop) for shimmering or glowing effects.
5. Set Frames (2 to 64) and FPS (1 to 30). On a layer, This layer moves × makes it flow faster or stay still while the others move.

#How to turn your own image into a tile

1. Click Import and choose, drop or paste an image. It's scaled to the tile size.
2. Pick Blend edges (cross-fades a band at the edges; set the band width) or Mirror (reflects the image so edges always match).
3. Check the 3×3 preview, then Download PNG or Use as layer to keep building on it.

#How to make transition tiles

1. Click Edge set and pick the Other texture to blend into.
2. Corner 16 makes 16 corner tiles for simple terrain transitions; Blob 47 makes the full 47-tile autotile set.
3. Wall top, Floor edge and Trim make borders and frames. Trim has Band, Frame and Inset styles.
4. Adjust Ragged edge for a natural or a clean border, then Download.

#Workflows

#A consistent tileset for one level

1. Pick a biome in Biomes and note its colours.
2. Make ground, wall and detail textures using Ramp from a biome… with that biome on each.
3. Build Blob 47 transitions between ground types, then export 8 variants of the ground so large floors don't look repetitive.
4. Send the tiles to Pixxori as images or the variants as a sheet to paint the level.

#A lit stone wall

1. Make the wall texture and export its Normal map at the same scale as the tile.
2. Light it in Pixxura, or use both maps in your engine's 2-D lights.

#Matching voxel props

1. Use the same biome in Pixxovo so props and textures share colours.

#Tips and shortcuts

• R new seed · V variations · 1 one tile · 3 3×3 · F fill the screen · S seam lines · 0 fit.
• Space play · ← / → step · Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo / redo · Ctrl+S export · Delete removes the selected layer.
• A texture's colours only ever come from its ramps (plus overlay ramps), so a ramp from your palette keeps it on palette.
• Send to App offers The tile (image), 8 variants (sprite sheet), The ramp (palette), and The animation (frames) when the texture moves.

#Troubleshooting

• My layer edits keep resetting. Click Detach first; material sliders rebuild the material's layers.
• GIF export says the recipe is still. Turn on scrolling, boil or colour cycling in Animation.
• A masked layer vanished. Coverage is at 0%, or Invert is on. Raise Coverage.
• The imported tile still shows a seam. Widen the Blend band, or use Mirror for patterns without a clear direction.
• Colours look off after loading a palette. The palette replaced the ramp; adjust Colours or pick a different palette.

#Related guides

• Pixxexa — Beginner · Pixxexa — Advanced
• Pixxori · Pixxura · Pixxovo · Pixxulo