Pixel Canvas

Overview

The entry point for hand-drawn art. Draw directly in the node's built-in pixel-art editor, with pen, eraser, fill, selection, and frame animation, then send the image through the graph's processing pipeline. It begins a hybrid workflow: draw the base by hand, then add shading, outlines, and recoloring with nodes.

Usage tips

• Open the editor with "✏️ Edit pixel art" in the inspector. The controls are standard: left-click for the primary color, right-click for the secondary color.
• Connect an image to reference to display it as a reference layer, useful for cleaning pixels over a 3D render or tracing a photograph.
• Connect palette to make the editor palette follow an external palette. Drawing with the project's shared palette keeps the asset within the managed color scheme.
• Draw multiple frames to output an animation asset directly through spritesheet.
• The indexed_image output is the entry point to indexed-color workflows and later bulk recoloring.

Common pitfalls

• Downstream processing might damage the drawing: this node always retains the original. Downstream nodes never touch it, so experiments are nondestructive.
• Changing the canvas size moved the drawing: resizing repositions existing pixels. Decide dimensions before starting to draw when possible.
• Only half should be drawn, then mirrored: connect symmetry downstream; it does not need to happen inside the editor.

Canvas-size binding

As a generator node, new nodes automatically bind width / height to the project canvas dimensions (_canvasWidth / _canvasHeight).

Use the 🔗 button in the inspector to remove or restore the binding.

Drawing editor

Press "✏️ Edit pixel art" in the inspector to open the EditorShell-based popup editor.

Tools

Controls

• Mouse wheel: zoom from 1× to 32×
• Alt+drag: pan
• Selection tool: switch rectangle / lasso / polygon with ▼
• Selection display: while a selection exists, every tool shows a 範囲選択中 badge and 選択解除 button
• Shape tool: switch rectangle / circle with ▼
• Pen / Eraser: set the brush size from 1〜16 in the toolbar
• Primary / secondary color: manage them with the two toolbar swatches and swap them with the exchange button
• Indexed-color mode: turn the # button ON to treat drawing colors as entries in the local palette
  • When switching from normal mode, if the canvas contains opaque colors outside the palette, confirm the number to add before appending them automatically
  • On switching, append a transparent swatch to the end of the local palette. It is a dedicated transparency entry, not an ordinary color index
  • When the primary / secondary color changes directly to a color absent from the palette, append it automatically
  • When the eyedropper picks a color absent from the palette, append it automatically
  • Double-click a palette color to change it and replace every matching canvas pixel
  • A palette color in use cannot be deleted. Erase or replace its canvas pixels first
  • If a new color is needed while the palette input is in Follow, first switch to a state that imports the input palette locally, then add it
• Local palette: use the built-in palette in the left sidebar; left-click sets the primary color and right-click sets the secondary color
• Import shared palette: select a tool-wide or project-wide palette and copy it into the local palette
  • After import, it no longer synchronizes with the shared palette. Editing colors in Pixel Canvas does not change the original shared palette
  • To propagate changes back to a shared palette, write them explicitly through a palette-editing node or similar operation
• External palette integration: with the palette input connected, use L(Local) / F(Follow) / I(Import)
  • Local: use the palette built into PixelCanvas
  • Follow: use the input palette directly as the editor palette
  • Import: copy the input palette into the local palette for independent editing
    • Before running, show a confirmation that the current local palette will be replaced
• Edit local palette: + adds the current color, the pen icon overwrites the selected color, and - deletes it
• Load/save palette file: the local palette supports file import / export
  • First-wave formats are GPL / ASE / PAL (JASC) / TXT-HEX
  • File import asks for confirmation before replacing the current local palette
• Edit a local palette color: double-click a palette entry to edit it in place with the shared color picker
• Sidebars: both the left palette and right layers can collapse; drag their boundaries to resize them
• Shape tool + Shift: constrain the aspect ratio when committing a square / circle
• Center-created circle: use the compass button to create a circle outward from the starting point as its center
• Shape colors: switch 塗りのみ / 線のみ / 両方. With 両方, fill uses the primary color and the outline uses the secondary color
• PP shape outline: turn PP ON to correct L-shaped overlaps on circular or curved outlines
• Pixel-perfect pen: with a 1px brush, detect L-shaped overlaps during the stroke and restore the corner dot
• Shift + click (Pen / Eraser): draw a straight line from the previous point to the current position
• Shift + Ctrl + click (Pen / Eraser): draw the line snapped to clean 45°, 2:1, or 3:1-family ratios
• Drag inside selection: move selected pixels
• Selection transform buttons: flip horizontally / vertically, scale 2×, reduce to 1/2, or clear selection
• Visible-layer selection operations: when ON, selection movement, flipping, and scaling apply to all visible layers together
• Fill boundary mode: choose whether only the current layer or the composite of visible layers defines fill boundaries
• ESC: close the editor

Layers

• Manage the layer / folder tree in the right panel
• Add a layer with +
• Create a folder with the Add Folder button
• Double-click a layer or folder to rename it
• Click to switch the active layer
• Ctrl / Cmd+click to select multiple items
• Drag a multi-selection to reorder it together
• Drop onto a folder to move items inside it
• Expand / collapse by folder
• Show / hide by folder
• Delete, while retaining at least one layer
• Drawing, filling, and erasing affect only the active layer
• When a selection exists, drawing, filling, and erasing are limited to that area
• In the selection tool, turning 可視レイヤー操作 ON makes movement / transformation target all visible layers
• In the fill tool, setting 境界モード to 可視 uses the visible-layer composite for boundary detection while writing only to the active layer

Frames

• Manage frames in the bottom frame strip
• Add a frame with +
• Duplicate the current frame with the Duplicate button
• Delete the current frame with -, retaining at least one frame
• Click a thumbnail to switch the active frame
• Loop all frames with the Play button
• Set global FPS on the right side of the frame strip
• output returns only the current frame; spritesheet combines all frames
• Connect directly to SpriteSheetPlayback or SpriteSheetToAseprite

Technical details

• The current canonical save format is a v6 JSON envelope
  • document.width / height
  • document.colorMode: "direct" | "indexed"
  • items[]
  • frames[]
  • cels[]
  • document.fps
  • editorState.activeLayerId / activeFrameId
• items[] is the layer / folder tree
• frames[] is horizontal frame identity; cels[] is pixel data at the frameId + layerId intersection
• Legacy single-image data migrates automatically to frame 0 when loaded
• Legacy base64 PNG remains load-compatible
• Retains editorState.activeLayerId, activeFrameId, and mode
• document.palette
  • sourceMode: "local" | "follow"
  • localColors: RGBA[]
• Undo/redo is layer-aware and managed per envelope
• Node output is the current-frame Image after flattening visible layers in canonical order
• It also packs all frames into the SpriteSheet contract and outputs them
• The indexed_image output converts the current-frame image into an IndexedImage following active palette order
  • Transparent pixels use a dedicated IndexedImage transparency slot and do not count as ordinary palette colors
  • If the image contains a color outside the active palette, append it at output time before indexing
• The palette output is the palette currently active in the editor
• Project saving/loading retains it automatically
• A pixel grid appears at zoom 4× or higher
• A 150ms debounce optimizes performance

Related nodes

• symmetry — the companion for drawing half, then mirroring
• quick_shade / outline — go-to finishing for a hand-drawn base
• indexed_image_apply_palette — replace colors in indexed output
• image_load — use artwork drawn in an external tool