Game Dev Tools: Sprite & VFX
Sprite animation, 2D VFX, texture packers.
| Software | Description | Pricing | License | Tags | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LibreSprite | LibreSprite is an open source fork of Aseprite. See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
Open source | |||
| Lightcube | Pixel art editor for Windows w/ PSD, JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF support. See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
Paid | Windows · PSD Support | Windows pixel art w/ PSD | |
| Pickle | Desktop pixel art editor for drawing sprites and animated frames. See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
Paid | Pixel Art · Editor | Pixel art editing | |
| Pixa.Pics | Browser pixel-art tool w/ vectorization. See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
Free tier | Browser · Vectorization | Browser pixel art | |
| Pixelator | Turn any image into pixel art. See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
Paid | Image→Pixel · Conversion | Image→pixel art | |
| Pixelorama | Free pixel art editor (made in Godot). See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
Open source | Pixel Art · Godot-built | Pixel art for games | |
| PixelOver | Convert artwork to pixel art with animation, bone rigging, and pixel-perfect transforms. See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
~$20 (free demo) | Paid | Artwork→Pixel · Rigging | Artwork → pixel art conversion |
| Pixen (GitHub) | Open-source pixel art and animation editor for macOS. See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
Open source | |||
| Pro Motion | Paid with trial, works on Windows. Advanced features tailored to creating pixel art for games. See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
Paid | |||
| PyxelEdit | Pixel art editor for tilesets, levels, animations. See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
Paid | Tilesets · Pixel Art | Pixel art tilesets/levels | |
| SpriteMancer | 2D VFX and sprite animation. See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
Paid | 2D VFX · Sprites | 2D game VFX | |
| TexturePacker | Sprite sheet packing, multi-engine export. See also: Software Reference → 2D & Animation Software |
Paid | Sprite Sheets · Multi-Engine | Sprite sheet packing |
Related:
- Cheetah Texture Packer. High efficient and fast 2D bin packing tool.
- Ez Sprite Sheet. Creates sprite sheets from animated GIFs.
- Fusion Character Animator. Small tool for Clickteam Fusion 2.5 to facilitate the animation of 2D character sprites for developers.
- GlueIT License unspecified. Free Simple Spritesheet Tool.
- Kavex's Spritesheet Maker. Free spritesheet maker to replace GlueIT. Has much newer export formats.
- Laigter. Free normal/specular/AO map generator for 2D.
- Leshy SpriteSheet Tool. HTML5 tool for creating, packing, and modifying sprite sheets and texture atlases.
- Libgdx Texture Packer. Texture Packer built into Libgdx.
- Make Your Own Pixel Art Paid. Walks you step-by-step through the available tools, pixel art techniques, the importance of shapes, colors, shading, and how to turn your art into animation.
- Owlboy. Explore a detailed steampunk world in the clouds. With it's range of endearing animations and expressions the world and it's characters come to life.
- Paul Robertson. Australian, creating cute, sometimes cosmic and psychedelic, and sometimes weird nightmarish pixel art.
- PixelCraft. Open source and free, works in the browser. Easy to try out in the browser and as a PWA offline.
- ShoeBox. Adobe Air based app with game and ui related tools.
- Sprite Sheet Maker. Sprite Sheet Maker is a handy no fuss utility to pack sprites.
- Sprite Sheet Slicer. Sprite Sheet Slicer is a handy no fuss utility to slice sprites.
- SpriteLib. Collection of static and animated graphic objects (also commonly known as sprites).
- SpriteUV2 Paid. Tool for creating optimal meshes for textures/sprites and packing them into an atlas.
- Starbound. Travel across vibrant, colorful and expansive galaxies, including creative dynamic animations.
- Stitches. An HTML5 sprite sheet generator.
- Talos VFX. Node based, open source VFX Editor with interface and a ready to use libGDX runtime.
- Tilesplit. CLI text-based tilesheet splitter and namer. Turn a spritesheet into many separate files with names you pick, or not if you don't care. Support templates and textures that are not all the same size.
- Walking animation cycle in games. Tutorial series on 2D walk-cycle animation for games.
- Wobblepaint. Pico8 editor that give life to pixel art with a little wobble.