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Pixx Suite

Animate · GIF & loop animator · Advanced

Pixxifo — Advanced

How Pixxifo builds every file: the output pipeline, one shared GIF palette, matte and alpha cut, Auto resize, grid detection, WebP and PNG frames, limits.

Open Pixxifo

#What you'll learn

  • The order Pixxifo applies direction, background, resizing and the format, so you can predict the output.
  • How GIF colours, transparency, matte and dithering really work, and why a few settings change the file size so much.
  • When Auto resizing keeps crisp pixels and when it smooths.
  • How the sheet grid is detected and how to describe tricky sheets by hand.
  • What the PNG-frames ZIP, WebP and sheet outputs contain, and the size limits.

#Before you start

  • Work through Pixxifo — Intermediate first: timing, direction and loop, seamless loops, transparency and formats.
  • Know where the animation will be shown (a chat app, a website, a game), because that decides the format.

#How-tos

#How to predict the output: the pipeline

Every export runs the same steps, in this order:

  1. Direction is applied: reverse plays end → start; ping-pong plays 1…n then n−1…2, so the end frames are never doubled. Your frames in the Editor are not changed.
  2. Background: transparent, or flattened onto a colour.
  3. Resize to the chosen Size (in percent).
  4. Format: GIF, APNG, WebP, PNG frames or a sheet.

Pixxifo then decodes the file it just made and checks it has the expected number of frames before offering the download.

#How to control GIF colours precisely

  1. A GIF uses one palette for the whole animation, so colours never flicker between frames. GIF colours sets its size (up to 256).
  2. With Keep transparency on, one palette entry is reserved for "clear", so a transparent GIF has at most 255 visible colours.
  3. Before the colours are chosen, every pixel is made fully solid or fully clear. With Keep transparency on, pixels softer than Alpha cut are cleared; every other pixel is blended onto the Matte colour by its opacity and made solid, so a soft edge becomes a solid edge tinted toward the matte. With Keep transparency off, everything is blended onto the matte.
  4. Dither spreads the remaining error into patterns. It makes gradients smoother and files bigger; pixel art usually looks best without it.
  5. Frame disposal is chosen automatically by the encoder, so you don't have to manage it.

#How to know when Auto resize keeps pixels crisp

  1. Pixxifo treats an animation as pixel art when almost all pixels (98 % or more) are fully clear or fully solid and it has at most 256 colours.
  2. With Resize: Auto, pixel art scaled by a whole number (100 %, 200 %, 400 %…) uses nearest neighbour: every pixel becomes a clean square.
  3. Everything else (50 %, 150 %, photos, painted art) is smoothed: averaged when shrinking, blended when growing.
  4. Choose Pixel art or Smooth to override it. Odd percentages with Pixel art give uneven pixel sizes.

#How to describe a tricky sheet

  1. In 2 · Check the grid, the chip explains which rule matched (transparent gaps between frames, a solid gutter colour, or an even split).
  2. For sheets with borders, set Margin X / Y (space before the first column and above the first row) and Gap X / Y (space between cells). With Columns & rows, the cell size is worked out after subtracting the margins on both sides.
  3. With Frame size, type one frame's width and height directly; this is the most reliable for sheets with uneven empty space.
  4. In 3 · Choose frames & speed, use the Row / Col chips (keep only that row or column) to pull one animation out of a multi-animation sheet.

#How to use the PNG frames, sheet and WebP outputs

  1. PNG frames downloads a ZIP of numbered PNGs (ping-pong already expanded) plus timing.json with each frame's delay, ready for engines and other tools.
  2. Sheet writes all frames into one sprite sheet PNG.
  3. WebP is built from one still per frame at your WebP quality and combined into an animated WebP. If your browser can't make WebP, the option is missing.
  4. Size estimates come from encoding a few frames and extrapolating; the final export shows the exact size.

#How to stay inside the limits

  1. The Editor canvas is 1–480 pixels per side, the same frame limit as the other Pixx apps. Sheet → GIF can produce larger outputs, because its frames are the sheet's cells scaled by percent.
  2. Every output side is capped at 4096 pixels.
  3. Sheet → GIF accepts PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF or BMP up to 50 MB.

#Workflows

#One animation, every platform

  1. Finish the loop in the Editor.
  2. Export a GIF at 2× with a Matte matching the chat app's background for sharing.
  3. Export a WebP at the same size for your website, and PNG frames at 1× for the game.

#Multi-animation sheet to separate loops

  1. In Sheet → GIF, click the Row 1 chip and create the first loop.
  2. Click Row 2, create again, and so on. Each result lands in Recent.

#Pixxifo in a Flow pipeline

Use Pixxifo as the last step of a Flow for marketing loops (Pixxani → Pixxifo → Pixxkit): open the step, make the loop, and Send result to Flow so the next app picks it up.

#Tips and shortcuts

  • A GIF with 32–64 colours and no dither is often a third of the size of a 256-colour one, with little visible difference for pixel art.
  • Holding the last frame (Hold the last frame +) is cheaper than duplicating it: one frame with a longer delay.
  • Delays under 20 ms play slowly in browsers; for very fast animations, drop frames instead.
  • The Editor project (frames, timing, settings) autosaves on this device, and Cloud stores it in your account.

#Troubleshooting

  • The file is much bigger than expected. Dither and many colours are the usual causes; also check the Size percentage.
  • Edges look jagged in the GIF. Raise Alpha cut for thinner edges, lower it for fuller ones, or use a Matte.
  • Pixels look uneven after scaling. Use a whole-number size (200 %, 300 %) or set Resize to Smooth for odd sizes.
  • The grid misses the first frame. Set Margin X / Y to the offset of the first cell.
  • The check step fails. The browser couldn't build that format (often WebP); export GIF or APNG.