Pixelbolt pixel art toolkit

Build a character animation from parts, a terrain tileset, particle effects such as sparks, embers or dust, simulated smoke, fire, explosions, steam, magic swirls and water (splashes, waterfalls, drips, bubbling potions), or a lighting normal map. Compile a pixelforge-poses source (named parts, attachments, rotated parts, tweened in-betweens, mirrored poses, markers), a pixelforge-autotile template (47-tile blob or 16-tile cardinal sets), a pixelforge-fx source (seeded particle emitters baked into frames), a pixelforge-fluid source (a deterministic fluid simulation mapped onto palette ramps; loops seamlessly) or a pixelforge-normals source (a lighting normal pass derived from a colour recipe, aligned for scene lighting and editable like any recipe) into an ordinary recipe. Saves the recipe as a revision and returns a contact sheet; pass metadata: true for pose attachment/marker metadata, the autotile mask table, particle counts, fluid peaks and per-frame pixel counts, or the normal directions.

Start here before drawing pixel art, sprites, tiles, icons, effects or animations. Get the Pixelbolt authoring guide, JSON Schema, and a complete editable example. Pass topic poses, scenes, autotile, fx, fluid or normals for those sidecar schemas.

Turn existing pixel art or a sprite sheet PNG into an editable recipe. Import a native-resolution 8-bit RGB/RGBA PNG (optionally sliced by an unscaled atlas) as an editable recipe without changing any pixel. Pass data (base64 PNG) or path (inside the server root). Saves the recipe as a revision.

Look at pixel art, a sprite or an animation frame by frame to check how it looks. See a project without exporting assets. Returns one PNG contact sheet of every frame (or the chosen frames, or one animation in playback order), read left to right and top to bottom, with each cell's frame name and duration. With grid: true it also returns palette-key text grids with x/y rulers for exact pixel checks. view: tile repeats frames 3x3 for seam review. Use region to zoom in. Saves an immutable recipe revision. Use this while iterating; call pixel_render to export.

Fix or tweak pixel art (one pixel, a colour, a frame or its timing) without redrawing it. Change a recipe with targeted edits instead of resending it. Pass revision or project, plus changes applied in order: {"set": path, "value": v}, {"insert": path, "value": v}, {"remove": path}, or {"paint": "frames[blink]", "value": [{"x": 9, "y": 7, "color": "k"}]}. Paint replaces exact RGBA in canvas coordinates after all layers; transparent erases. {"cleanup": "frames[run-2]", "value": {"corners": true}} proposes fixes for doubled corners and stray pixels. Other paths look like frames[blink].layers[body].ops[2].x2, palette.k or animations.idle.frames[-]. Or pass overlay to apply a saved correction overlay. The patch is atomic and the result must validate. Returns the new revision, edit details, every frame whose pixels changed (exact pixels for small changes), timing and animation changes, and a before/after PNG with one row per frame. Saves immutable base and result revisions; render the revision to export assets.

Export pixel art as game-ready files: sprite sheet, sprites, animations, GIFs or frames for a video. Render a project into PNG sprite sheet, atlas JSON, individual PNGs, APNG animations, CSS, and Canvas player. Writes a new unique folder inside the configured export directory and saves an immutable recipe revision. Returns the folder, key files (relative), frame/animation counts, actual playback and a bounded contact sheet. Large previews report sample positions and omissions; all frames still export. Optionally select an animation.

Compose a pixel art scene or room from sprites, tilemaps and lighting. Render a pixelforge-scene manifest (placements, tilemaps with autotile legends and neighbour rules, named cues, sequences, trajectories, attachments, ground sorting, shade placements, palette themes and optional multiplied or ramp lighting) at a time in milliseconds and return the image plus placements and warnings. Assets may be inline recipes, files under the server root, or {"revision": id}. Pass export: true to write a replayable scene bundle to a new folder, and sequence: { fps, size } to write the scene as numbered PNG frames for a video editor.

Check a pixel art recipe for mistakes before inspecting or exporting it. Validate a pixel project and return its revision id, dimensions, frame timing, animations, and clipping locations. Pass fps to check the timing against a video frame grid. Saves an immutable recipe revision; no asset export.