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Welcome to the pixi wiki!

pixi is an open-source cross-platform pixel art editor.

The workflow provided by pixi targets artists who double as developers, or artists who enjoy an organized workflow that speeds up the process of getting artwork from the editor and into the game.

The idea is that typically the workflow of an artist for a pixel-art sprite-based game is:

• Draw a ton of sprites
• Export these sprites as either a ton of loose images or sprite sheets
• Try to manage these sprites naming convention and/or package these sprites into a sprite atlas
• Repeat the entire export/packing process each time changes are made

One of the main goals of pixi is to reduce/eliminate some of these steps.

pixi attempts to do this in a number of ways:

• Similar to VSCode, folders are projects. pixi provides a "file explorer" panel that allows you to see the tree/organization of your project and easily open many of your project files without exiting the program.

• The next step is to understand that pixi files consist of rows and columns of same-size tiles. If you need a different tile size, simply create another file. As an example, I have drawn character animations for a roughly 24x48 px character using 64x64 tiles. This gives me some flexibility on animations that may extend beyond the character. Err on the side of caution and begin your artwork on tiles you know will be plenty large for any animation you may want to create. Don't worry about the wasted space around the character, the sprite packer will handle this for you later!

• Once you have a project going, you may want to package your sprites to use in a game engine or framework. The idea next is that you want the sprites to ideally be within a single atlas, and easily be able to draw these sprites. Typically, in engines such as Unity, you can import a packed image and slice it, back to the issue of managing tons of sprites, origins, and animators. pixi aims to reduce this friction by allowing the artist to place each tiles origin at design-time. With the origin located per-sprite prior to packing, we can safely remove all the extra space around your sprite in each tile, and pack the sprites tightly. Alongside the final image, an atlas file is exported with all the data you will need to center and draw your sprites consistently during any animation, knowing that the origin of the sprite is identical with the intended origin set by the artist.

• Finally, since the root project folder contains all your individual pixi files, you can safely assume that all files in the folder are targets to package into an atlas. You won't have to export/import individual images, pixi will collect all applicable layers across your project files and tightly package each sprite into a single image for efficient drawing in a game engine or framework.