Free & open source for non-commercial use

Generate pixel art
tilesets with AI

A complete toolchain from text to tileset. Define tiles in .pax — a TOML-based format LLMs write natively — then render, validate, and compose maps at native speed.

Get started See how it works

Rust engineMCP serverFlutter studioCLIWFC maps

Showcase

Made with PIXL

Every tile below is defined in a .pax file and rendered by the engine. What you see is what LLMs write.

View full gallery

grass_lush.pax

water_deep.pax

stone_brick.pax

sand_dune.pax

lava_pool.pax

wood_plank.pax

Features

A complete AI pixel art pipeline

Everything you need to create, refine, and compose pixel art — from a simple text description to a full game-ready tileset.

PIXL Studio

Desktop editor with pixel canvas, tilemap painter, backdrop composer, and integrated AI generation. Draw, preview, and iterate — all in one window.

Built-in art direction

PIXL reviews your sprites as you work — outlines clean? Colors readable? Subject centered? Get specific notes on what to fix, not just a pass/fail.

Composite sprites

Build characters from reusable 16×16 parts — body, head, armor, weapon. Swap a helmet or add a shield without redrawing. Generate dozens of variants from a single base.

Maps from tiles

Draw a few tiles, describe a scene, and PIXL fills in the rest — seamless dungeons, forests, or towns. Export straight to Godot, Unity, or Tiled.

Learns your style

Scan any reference art, train on it, generate in that style. Style fingerprinting, LoRA training, A/B comparison, and style blending — all local, all yours.

Animation

Sprite animation with four frame encodings — grid, delta, linked, and mirror. Color cycling, animation zones, and GIF export built in.

How it works

From text to tilemap

Define a tileset in plain text. PIXL renders individual tiles and composes them into full maps. Click through the demo levels below.

overworld.pax

# overworld.pax — 6 tiles, "overworld" theme

[[tile]]
name = "grass"
size = 8
palette = ["#4a7c2e", "#5a9e3a", "#3d6b24", "#6ab847"]
data = """
0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0
0 1 3 1 0 0 1 0
1 0 0 0 1 1 3 1
…
"""

[[tile]]
name = "dirt_path"
size = 8
palette = ["#7a5230", "#966b40", "#5c3a1e", "#a88050"]

[[tile]]
name = "water"
size = 8
palette = ["#1a5276", "#2980b9", "#3498db", "#85c1e9"]

[[tile]]
name = "sand"
size = 8
palette = ["#c2b280", "#d4c896", "#e8deb5", "#a89a6a"]

[[tile]]
name = "tree"
size = 8
palette = ["#4a7c2e", "#2d5a1e", "#3d6b24", "#5c3a1e"]

[[tile]]
name = "flower_grass"
size = 8
palette = ["#4a7c2e", "#5a9e3a", "#e85d75", "#f0c870"]

[map]
width  = 16
height = 12
data   = """
4 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 3 3 3 3 0 5 0 4
0 0 5 0 0 0 0 3 3 2 2 3 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 1 1 0 3 2 2 2 3 0 0 0 0
5 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 3 2 3 0 0 0 5 0
…
"""

pixl render overworld.pax

Grass plains with a winding dirt path, pond, and trees — 16×12 tilemap, 6 tile types

grass

dirt_path

water

sand

tree

flower_grass

Playground

Try it yourself

Paint pixels with the tools below. The .pax output updates live.

my_tile.pax

[tile]
name = "my_tile"
size = 16

[palette]
colors = [
  "#0a0a0f",  # 0
  "#e0a040",  # 1
  "#f0c870",  # 2
  "#4a7c2e",  # 3
  "#5a9e3a",  # 4
  "#2980b9",  # 5
  "#85c1e9",  # 6
  "#cc3300",  # 7
  "#e85d75",  # 8
  "#e4e4ef",  # 9
  "#8888a0",  # 10
  "#5c3a1e",  # 11
  "#7a5230",  # 12
  "#c2b280",  # 13
  "#2c2c34",  # 14
  "#7a4aaa",  # 15
]

[pixels]
data = """
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
0:16
"""

Philosophy

Your art. Your format. Your repo.

PAX files are plain text — they live in your git repo, diff cleanly, and belong to you. No cloud lock-in, no opaque binary blobs. LLMs help you create, but you own every pixel.

Plain text

TOML + RLE

Git friendly

Clean diffs

Local first

No cloud needed

Integrations

Works with your tools

Export game-ready assets to the engines and editors you already use. One tileset, every target.

Aseprite

Import / export PAX & PAX-L, critique, atlas packing, format conversion

Godot

TileMap resources, TileSet scenes, sprite atlases

Unity

Tile palettes, grid data, sprite sheets with metadata

Tiled

.tmx tilemaps, tilesets, object layers

TexturePacker

Atlas sprite sheets with JSON hash metadata

GB Studio

Game Boy-compatible tileset and sprite export

Claude / MCP

24 MCP tools for AI-driven tile creation and refinement

Pricing

Simple pricing

Free for open source and non-commercial use. One flat fee for commercial projects.

Community

Open source & non-commercial

Free

✓Full engine, CLI, MCP server & Studio
✓All rendering and generation features
✓OSI-approved open source projects
✓Personal projects & education
✓Research & evaluation
✓Community support

Get started

Commercial

For businesses & commercial products

29€one-time / per org

✓Everything in Community
✓Commercial products & SaaS
✓Client work & internal tools
✓Bring your own API keys (BYOK)
✓Perpetual license, no subscriptions
✓Priority support via email

Buy license

Get started

Install

Three ways to use PIXL. Studio bundles everything — no separate engine install needed.

Studio

Visual editor with bundled engine

brew install SimplyLiz/pixl/pixl-studio

Or download the .dmg from GitHub Releases→

CLI

Terminal & CI/CD pipelines

curl -fsSL https://github.com/SimplyLiz/PIXL/releases/latest/download/pixl-v1.0.0-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz | tar xz

Binaries for macOS, Linux & Windows→

Rust crate

Embed the parser in your project

cargo add pixl-core

View on crates.io→

Download from GitHub

Generate pixel art
tilesets with AI

Made with PIXL