With tools such as uScript and Brain Builder, Unity is quickly becoming the number one place to go for artists / non-programmer types to play around in a powerful 3D engine and to concept ideas. Unfortunately for some, creating 2D art assets in the app is not possible and the work-arrounds involved with using 2D assets isn’t as smooth as it could be. One possible solution which is currently in development is RagePixel by Juha Kiili who is also responsible for RageSpline - a 2D vector art tool.

The idea for RagePixel is to create an interface which lets you quickly generate pixelart directly into Unity. Here are some of the current and planned features:

Some features:
- Super easy setup
- Pixelart assets can be drawn in the scene view
- Automatic atlas generation while drawing!
- Animation
- Text/font support
- Tint color
- Pixel size selector (1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, ..)
- Easy snapping + transform coordinates presented in pixel space (1 unit = 1 pixel)
- Right-click color picker
- Color replacer tool
- Stretching/repeating sprites easily
- Separate drawing undo history per sprite

Possible features (not yet implemented)
- Select/copy/paste/cut functionality for drawing
- Tilemap support
- Clever color palette modulation
- Pixel perfect collision detection system

Currently the add-on isn’t available for download but I’ve read that late February is a possibility. Below is a video of a game created with RagePixel:

Play that game here!

About the author

Michael Manning

Michael is a sound designer and composer working in the games industry. His portfolio can be found at www.manningaudio.com