Pixel Art Editor Plugin (wip)

An article by mgear    8 Comments

** New version is being worked on here: http://unitycoder.com/blog/2015/01/13/assetstore-unipix-pixel-art-tool/

Havent find any good pixel graphics editors.. so started making a simple pixel art editor plugin (meant only for maximum 32×32 sized images). (Screenshot showing first test, 16×16 image, 32x zoom, small preview on the right side.. no colors yet)

I have tried these free ones already, but none of them really has all the necessary features in one, or they are just not user friendly enough..
– D-Pixel
– Pixothello
– Asesprite
– Graphics Gale
– IcoFX (not free anymore)
– Grafx2
– ..

Current features of “UniPixel” (working name)
– Editor plugin
– Can draw with 3 mouse buttons (right click to erase!)
– Canvas with adjustable zoom
– Canvas background grid, with adjustable light and dark colors
– Preview (real size)

TODO:
– Grid lines
– Toolbar (with shortcut keys also)
– Somekind of settings? (for grid colors, image size, filename?)
– Saving
– Loading
– Layers
– Floodfill
– Gradients
– Color picker
– Color palette
– Undo
– Mirror/flip/scroll canvas
– Live preview toggle
– Automatic black borders layer
–

Notes:
– Problem: If you save image with File.WriteAllBytes(), how do you know when saving is done and file is ready (without sleeping / looping)? (because you would need to set image import settings to filtermode.point, but it will try too early..) ** For now, using loop with try catch..
– Problem: Drawing lines in EditorWindow.. this (drawline) is the only way? Oo..
– Building the GUI/UI is *too painful*..i guess have to make GUI builder/editor first, unless there are some in store?

Image#2: first tests, can see the texture in scene/game view also (if its already assigned to some material) – live previews after save! (some errors appear when pressing play, editorwindow gets reseted?)

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Image#3: Flood fill works, also Loading, Saving, Save copy, Clear. (toolbar still needs work..)

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Image#4: Color picker, Extra previews with black and white backgrounds, mousewheel for lighten/darken color, middle mouse button for pixel color pick..

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Image#5: Automatic black borders layer toggle, image scrolling.. (huh, unity gui is not fun when you would need to place lots of elements.. have to redesign the UI later completely)