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Pixx Suite

Create · Pixel illustration & sprite animation · Intermediate

Pixxivi — Intermediate

Go past your first sprite: layer groups and masks, tags and linked frames, templates, palettes and indexed colour, lighting, checkpoints and clean sprite sheet exports.

Open Pixxivi

#What you'll learn

  • Organise bigger sprites with layer groups, clipping masks and layer masks.
  • Animate faster with linked cels, multi-frame editing, tags and the animation preview window.
  • Start characters from the Template library and keep your colours under control with palettes and indexed colour mode.
  • Light a scene and Bake it, then export sprite sheets your game engine can read.
  • Keep your work safe with version checkpoints, the undo history and cloud sync.

#Before you start

  • You should be comfortable with everything in the Pixxivi beginner guide: drawing, frames, onion skin and a first export.
  • Any sprite works for practice. The examples below use a 64×64 character with 8 frames.
  • Sign in if you want your projects and checkpoints on more than one device.

#How-tos

#How to group layers and use clipping masks

  1. Select a layer in the Layers panel and press Ctrl+G to put it in a group, or press Ctrl+Alt+N to make an empty group.
  2. Drag layers into or out of the group. Groups can be folded and nested.
  3. Ctrl+Shift+U ungroups. Hiding, locking or changing the opacity of a group applies to everything inside it.
  4. To keep shading inside a shape, put the shading layer directly above the shape layer and press Ctrl+Alt+G. The upper layer is now clipped: it only shows where the layer below has pixels.

#How to use a layer mask

  1. Select the layer and choose Layer → Add layer mask.
  2. Press \ to switch between painting the mask and painting the pixels.
  3. While you edit the mask, painting reveals and erasing hides. Hidden areas get a red tint so you can see them.
  4. Switch the mask off to compare, then choose Apply layer mask to make the change permanent or Delete layer mask to undo it.

#How to animate faster with linked cels and multi-frame editing

  1. Select a range of frames in the timeline (click the first, Shift-click the last).
  2. Press Alt+L to link the cels on the current layer. Linked cels share one image, so a background or a body part drawn once shows on every linked frame. Alt+U unlinks the current cel.
  3. Press Alt+M (Edit all selected frames at once) and draw: the stroke lands on every selected frame. Press Alt+M again to go back to one frame.
  4. For a layer that never changes, open ⋯ and make it a static layer: it holds one image on every frame.

#How to set frame timing and tags

  1. Click a frame and type its duration in the ms box. Different durations per frame give your animation weight (a long anticipation frame, a fast swing).
  2. Select the frames of one move and press Alt+T to make a tag. Name it (idle, walk, attack) and choose forward, reverse or ping-pong.
  3. Pick the tag in the loop menu to play only that move. Press Shift+P for the Animation preview window, which keeps playing while you draw.
  4. Ctrl+Shift+J jumps to a frame by number; , and . step back and forward.

#How to start from the Template library

  1. Open File → Template library (Ctrl+Shift+T) or choose a template on the projects screen.
  2. Pick a template, for example Hero (male) — platformer set, and choose the animations you want: all, the essentials, or your own choice.
  3. Decide how the template comes in: as a locked guide that is never exported, as an editable copy, or both. You also get an empty Art layer and one tag per animation with its own FPS.
  4. Draw your character on the Art layer over the guide, frame by frame.
  5. When you export a sprite sheet with row per tag, you get the template's layout back: one animation per row.

#How to work in indexed colour

  1. Open Sprite → Colour mode (RGBA / indexed)… and switch to indexed. Every pixel now uses a palette colour, and alpha is either on or off. You can dither while converting.
  2. Edit a swatch in the Palette panel: every pixel that uses it changes at once.
  3. Load a different palette with the same number of colours to make a palette swap (a second costume or an enemy variant), then export it.
  4. ⋯ in the Palette panel also generates colour ramps and builds a palette from the sprite's colours.

#How to light a scene and bake it

  1. Choose the light tool (Shift+L) and click to place a light. Drag to move it, Alt-drag to change its radius.
  2. Give each light a colour, radius, strength and halo, and make it steady, flicker or pulse. Flicker and pulse loop cleanly with your animation.
  3. In the scene settings, set the darkness and its colour, the number of stepped bands, and dithering.
  4. Click Bake. Choose two editable layers (Light · shade and Light · glow, which reproduce the preview exactly) or one lit copy, optionally snapped to your palette.

#How to save checkpoints and go back in time

  1. Press Ctrl+Alt+S to save a version checkpoint before a big change. Pixxivi keeps the last 30 per project.
  2. Open the version history from the File menu and choose Restore as copy: you get the old version as a new project, and your current work stays untouched.
  3. Press Ctrl+H for the Undo history to jump back several steps at once.

#Workflows

#A game-ready character in one session

  1. Start from File → Template library with the essentials of the hero template.
  2. Draw the base pose on frame 1, then link the cels of anything that doesn't move.
  3. Tag each animation, time the frames in ms, and check each tag in the preview window (Shift+P).
  4. Export a Sprite sheet with row per tag, trim, a little padding, and JSON data: Aseprite-compatible (hash).

#Draw here, pack and loop elsewhere

  1. Finish the animation in Pixxivi.
  2. Click Send to App and choose The animation for Pixxula (pack it with other characters into one atlas) or Pixxifo (a looping GIF or a sheet with presets).
  3. Choose The palette to send your colours to Pixxulo and reuse them in every other app.

#Run it as a Flow step

  1. In Flow, add Pixxivi as the drawing step of a pipeline (for example Pixxivi → Pixxeta → Pixxula).
  2. Open in Pixxivi from the step, draw, then use Send result to Flow on the Flow chip in the top bar.
  3. The next person (or app) picks up your result from the step.

#Tips and shortcuts

  • Alt+N new frame (a copy), Alt+Shift+N new empty frame, Alt+D duplicate selected frames, Alt+Delete deletes them.
  • Shift+O onion skin on or off; Tab hides the timeline; F focus mode hides the panels.
  • X swaps the primary and secondary colour; [ and ] step through the palette.
  • = and - change the brush size; D toggles the dither brush; P toggles pixel-perfect; Shift+A alpha lock.
  • Ctrl+B turns a selection into a custom brush.
  • Ctrl+Alt+E is a quick PNG / GIF export with your last settings.
  • Each frame is at most 480×480 pixels. There is no cap on the number of frames; watch the memory readout on very long animations.

#Troubleshooting

  • A stroke changed several frames. Multi-frame editing (Alt+M) is on, or those cels are linked. Turn multi-frame editing off or unlink the cel with Alt+U.
  • Shading spills outside the shape. Clip the shading layer to the shape below with Ctrl+Alt+G.
  • A palette swap changed the wrong colours. Palette swaps work by position in the palette. Make sure both palettes list their colours in the same order.
  • The exported sheet has no rows per animation. Choose row per tag in the Layout list, and check that every animation has a tag.
  • Lighting isn't in the export. Lighting is a preview until you Bake it.