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Learn

Here you will find resources to learn how Pyxel Edit works.

Courses

Creating pixel art characters in Pyxel Edit, by Daniel Benítez

Full course at Domestika (English, Portuguese, German and Spanish subtitles available).

Pixel Art Character Animation for Video Games, by Daniel Benítez

Full course at Domestika (English, Portuguese, German and Spanish subtitles available).

Creation of Pixel Art Scenes for Video Games, by Daniel Benítez

Full course at Domestika (English, Portuguese, German and Spanish subtitles available).

Videos

Tutorials by Christopher Yabsley (Achebit).

Tutorials by Leif Masrud.


Getting started

This tutorial will show you the basic process of making a tileset using Pyxel edit.


  • Begin by drawing a tile using the pen.

    A single grass tile drawn with the pen tool in Pyxel Edit


  • Press Tab to show the tile indices.

    X means the tile is not mapped to a tile in the tileset.

    The canvas with tile indices shown, unmapped tiles marked with an X


  • Now select the Tile Draw tool (Tile Draw tool icon) and Ctrl-click the tile, to put it in the tileset.

    The tile index number has changed to a 1 to indicate which tile is referenced.

    The tile added to the tileset, its index number changed to 1


  • Select the tile by clicking it in the tileset window.

    You can also Right-click a tile in the canvas to select it. Click and drag to place as many instances of the tile as you want and they will all refer to the same tile data. That means that if you edit one, the changes are propagated to all of them. The blue number indicates the currently selected tile.

    Several instances of the selected tile placed in a row on the canvas


  • Shift-click to place a copy of the tile in the canvas.

    The copy will have a different index, and will not refer to the same tile. If you edit the new tile, the old tile will remain the same.

    A copy of the tile placed with Shift-click, getting its own tile index


  • You can now edit the copy to make a variation of the first tile.

    I'm erasing some pixels to make a nice edge tile.

    Editing the copied tile into a grass edge tile by erasing pixels


  • Press X to flip the tile, then place it in the canvas again.

    This looks OK, but you can see the seam where the tiles are symmetric so we will make a copy and edit the tile to make it look more natural.

    The edge tile flipped with X and placed on the other side, showing a symmetric seam


  • Ctrl-click the flipped tile to make a copy.

    The flipped copy will be added to the tileset window.

    The flipped tile copied into the tileset as a new tile


  • Edit the tile to make it more natural looking.

    Now the seam is not as apparent.

    The tile edited to look more natural, hiding the seam between tiles


  • Make some more tiles, add a background and rearrage the tiles to make a nice mockup.

    I went ahead and made tiles for the vertical faces and some transition tiles. The background is on a separate layer below the tiles.

    When done you can export the mockup as an image, or export the tileset and the tilemap and import it into your game. Have fun!

    Here is the resulting pyxel document: DemoDoc.pyxel.

    Finished pixel art mockup: a grass and dirt tileset with transition tiles and a sky background