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Making pixel art in affinity designer


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Hello,

I am thinking on making a game in a pixel art style,

could anyone help me with what I am doing,

I searched in the program and the web on way to do this but I found nothing

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6 minutes ago, Ahmed Yasir said:

could anyone help me with what I am doing

We need to see an example, with specific questions about any problems you have encountered.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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This is an example if what I am trying to make,

In adobe illustrator there is a tool that called rectangular grid tool Image below,

so is there any similar tool in affinity designer,

or any tool that allow me to make pixel art.

flat,800x800,075,f.jpg

x6DcI.png

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Sorry for being so dump 

To make grid go to (View > show grid),

Then go to (View > Grid and axis manger) there you can edit spacing, opacity ETC...

Then press (snapping (Magnet) > Snap to grid)

Here we come to the boring part (There could be better way but that what I found for now I will edit this If I find a better way to do it)

Make a square with the square tool resize it and snap it to the grid Duplicate it and repeat the process for every pixel you want to use 

make a square with every color you are going to use now choose all squares your going to use the same color with and use color picker tool and choose the color you want.

If I am wrong with any part please correct me. 

 

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21 minutes ago, owenr said:

Switch to the Pixel Persona and you'll find the Pixel Tool for creating raster pixel art.

Is there a way to snap it to the grid

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15 minutes ago, Ahmed Yasir said:

Is there a way to snap it to the grid

Of course.

See snapping and force pixel alignment options on the Context Toolbar.

snap.jpg.3ecc1f422990fa17a5c55dc2f1f21a12.jpg

Also see snapping settings. Click on the little down arrow next to the magnet.

snapping.jpg.1978e28c5cf358d4ebaafc71a8c203a9.jpg

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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yep, use the pixel persona + pixel tool. Works pretty (and hello from another pixel artist)

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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24 minutes ago, toltec said:

Of course.

See snapping and force pixel alignment options on the Context Toolbar.

snap.jpg.3ecc1f422990fa17a5c55dc2f1f21a12.jpg

I am already doing so but the pixel too still moves by pixels an not snapping to the grid when pressing 

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‘Move by whole pixels’ shouldn’t take precedence over ‘Force pixel alignment’, but it does! If you switch off ‘Move by whole pixels’ you will be able to snap objects accurately to the pixel grid.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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1 hour ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

‘Move by whole pixels’ shouldn’t take precedence over ‘Force pixel alignment’, but it does!

"Move By Whole Pixels" does exactly what it says it does: increase or decrease values by integer pixel values. So for example if something is at an x coordinate of 12.5 px, moving it by whole pixels will force it to keep the 0.5 pixel fraction. It is not an independent setting -- it only is available if "Force Pixel Alignment" is enabled. In the words of the Force Pixel Alignment help topic, it is "particularly useful for repositioning an object by a particular pixel distance while also maintaining the relevant partial pixels an object occupies."

If it did not take precedence over (whole) pixel alignment, it could not do this & it seems to me there would be little point in including it.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1 hour ago, R C-R said:

It is not an independent setting -- it only is available if "Force Pixel Alignment" is enabled.

Thanks. I guess I had forgotten that it’s a subsidiary option.

It seems that we’re talking about two different kinds of alignment here. I had thought that "Force Pixel Alignment" was shorthand for "Force alignment to the pixel grid" (which you obviously can’t do if you’re moving something by a whole number of pixels from a non-integer position).

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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1 hour ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

I had thought that "Force Pixel Alignment" was shorthand for "Force alignment to the pixel grid" (which you obviously can’t do if you’re moving something by a whole number of pixels from a non-integer position).

Despite the name & that it can't be enabled independently, I confess that I thought the same thing when I first started using the app. What it really does was not obvious to me until I read something one of the staff mentioned about it. :$

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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12 hours ago, toltec said:
12 hours ago, Ahmed Yasir said:

Is there a way to snap it to the grid

Of course.

That does not work for me with the Pixel Tool, regardless of how I have Snapping preferences set or with Force Pixel Alignment enabled.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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11 hours ago, R C-R said:

That does not work for me with the Pixel Tool, regardless of how I have Snapping preferences set or with Force Pixel Alignment enabled.

This might be a lost in translation thing ?

I would describe this as an "eight by eight pixel grid".

GRID.jpg.00fc0a7a9ebcb0baa3d26fb900cb1b53.jpg

As the OP is working in (more or less) individual pixels (see his first two posts) this grid is what he will want to align to. Setting Force Pixel Alignment will align the pixels drawn by the Pixel Tool to that.

That is not the same as aligning a vector shape or line to an Affinity display/snapping grid.

I see that this may cause some confusion. Perhaps you could come up with a better way of explaining it ?

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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32 minutes ago, toltec said:

As the OP is working in (more or less) individual pixels (see his first two posts) this grid is what he will want to align to. Setting Force Pixel Alignment will align the pixels drawn by the Pixel Tool to that.

As best as I can tell, the setting of Force Pixel Alignment is irrelevant for the Pixel Tool, because it always fills or erases whole pixels without any antialiasing. It is unaffected by any grids set with the Grids & Axis Manager, or any snapping settings. IOW, it always 'snaps' to the nearest whole pixel.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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52 minutes ago, R C-R said:

As best as I can tell, the setting of Force Pixel Alignment is irrelevant for the Pixel Tool, because it always fills or erases whole pixels without any antialiasing. It is unaffected by any grids set with the Grids & Axis Manager, or any snapping settings. IOW, it always 'snaps' to the nearest whole pixel.

Ah, yes. I see what you mean.

I rarely use the Pixel Tool and always clicked on Force Pixel Alignment. Totally unnecessarily as it happens.

Thanks, you may have saved me literally seconds in my yearly workflow ;)

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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Isn't there still the problem of export and antialiasing when rendering a pixel art or has a workflow been worked out for this?

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6 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Isn't there still the problem of export and antialiasing when rendering a pixel art or has a workflow been worked out for this?

I am not sure what you mean but if everything is created with the Pixel Tool, there is no anti-aliasing or unaligned pixels to worry about, unless maybe you export to a raster format at a different document size that would force antialiasing due to unaligned pixels.

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32 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am not sure what you mean but if everything is created with the Pixel Tool, there is no anti-aliasing or unaligned pixels to worry about, unless maybe you export to a raster format at a different document size that would force antialiasing due to unaligned pixels.

I can remember reading that some people had problems exporting and wondered if a specific workflow had been worked out to avoid more posts about not having nice pixelated pixel art.

 

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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At least if handling the pixel tool in the Pixel Persona of A. Designer (tho I handled a lot the beta, I don't have AP)  when zooming out you will see anti-aliasing , but is due to the visualization engine, only, no pixels are wrecked, easily checked once you get more zoomed in, the usual level of work in pixel art.

Not sure about why is so critical to have alignment features... I mean, good, but.. mission critical?

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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52 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

I can remember reading that some people had problems exporting and wondered if a specific workflow had been worked out to avoid more posts about not having nice pixelated pixel art.

After futzing around with this for a while using this lame 64 px art.afdesign test file, I think that as long as the *.afdesign file is pixelated (like if everything is drawn with the Pixel Tool) then it will remain pixelated when exported to a raster image file ... if (& only if?) the "Nearest Neighbor" resampling option is used, even if it is exported to different dimensions. The only exception I could find is exporting to jpg because (not surprisingly) too much lossy compression can introduce artifacts that turn the image into a blurry mess.

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28 minutes ago, R C-R said:

.... it will remain pixelated when exported to a raster image file ... if (& only if?) the "Nearest Neighbor" resampling option is used, even if it is exported to different dimensions. 

This is something I don't understand.

If it's NOT changing in dimension, why is any resampling being applied at all??

 

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1 hour ago, firstdefence said:

I can remember reading that some people had problems exporting and wondered if a specific workflow had been worked out to avoid more posts about not having nice pixelated pixel art.

 

I made a test yesterday, as IMO, this stuff in theory should be more up to Photo, is totally raster related. The attempt of doing pixel art through vector tools, the reasons to go that route totally escapes my understanding. Unless is planned a very complex pipeline providing with exports from same assets to res.  independent (different mobile sizes/proportions), SVGs for mobile AND pixel art exported from same asset, that is, in raster as well, for mobiles apps and game engines that would use raster only, instead, as all of this happens in actual game developments companies. Some games would even use both as an optimization trick. If not the case, IMO is a bit crazy to do pixel art with vector tools. Maybe you can do so, but is the wrong approach, imo. Hmmm...not totally so. In several places where they produce large quantities of icons, I've seen workflows 100% fully vector based. BUT! because they ended up mastering a method to quickly produce a clean enough  pixel-art export (from the vectors) which they'd clean up a bit more after that by hand. The average artist wouldn't get that right easily, speaking at least from an stats pov. Not my cup of tea for making good pixel art, tho...

My lightning fast test of yesterday -as I had tested the 1 px tool quite well, long ago, in Photo win beta- was fully in PIXEL PERSONA of AD, with the pixel tool, and exporting to PNG.  Doing so with formats like JPG instead would be extremely wrong, as that adds compression artifacts all over the place. I don't use any export persona for this (neither for anything, I don't to multiple files exports or the like, I don't get real benefit from using those for my activity) Even if not evident in a fast glance you'd get varied color tones in the best scenario of a JPG or other lossy format, blurriness if left at the usual default compression. Of course, my PNG export was not using any export persona, but directly from there, like I would have made in Photo for this pixel tool. Zero problems. Export was 100% good. IMO the pixel persona in AD, using the 1 px tool, totally a good enough environment to produce whatever the pixel art needed, be it tiles, sprites, backgrounds, whatever. Is it the most specific tool for that ? Nooope, even Krita has wrap around mode for tiles, isometric guides, an entire animation mode with keyframes handling, onion skinning and all, and other stuff. But the thing is, it is also a huge advantage to have all the standard tools for any other project that you might need to start, other than pixel art (plus, I'd be able to use many Pixel persona tools for Pixel Art, even with workarounds. Like in PS, Gimp, etc.). I keep liking to discover that at least in what I'm typically required to do (freelancer stuff), Designer is such a royal work horse.... Also, as I've done pixel art of very advanced level with just MS Paint, there's indeed some that -wrongly- say that pixel art should be done solely with that software (For Mac people : an "accessories" tool included in every Windows, but an old version which kept offered as a download in many geeky sites. Today there's too many tools free and paid, usually low cost, so much better for the purpose) -a bit of a silly statement, tho- but is a work profile that has its main factor mostly in the artist SKILL, rather than in the software's features, IMO. Any specific tool like Cosmigo's, or even the free Gale is more dedicated to the task and better  for companies doing that 24/7 (like always, like happens with Spine in 2D anim hi res for games, is also as there are in-house pipelines for engines, so it is a must for them).

For freelancing, I prefer a work horse for virtually any other thing that eventually, as a bonus, allows me doing pretty well any pixel art project (among other things, as in volume, more freelancing in other fields, and with exceptions, typically better paid. Pixel art and  comics making are two areas in which their professionals, we do get usually way lower payment than deserved for expertise and skills. So, the "work horse" thing is more important to most freelancers...). For that, the pixel tool is such a gift. But I've been a for ever defender in PS of just using the "pencil" tool, as is non aliased. And using non aliasing marquees, that's all u needed. Super epic discussions about it, but funny fact: I've worked for certain huge company in games/apps making, and most of the guys typically defending that you can only do old school, and use certain niche-geekish type of tools to produce pixel art, those mostly had not even done well paid gigs, or gigs at all, let alone get a salary for doing that 24/7. Like in many things, there's ppl (NONE in this thread, btw) protecting their sort of niche to avoid intrusiveness (and others letting 'em do so due to the -lets use yet another time the so trendy term- impostor syndrome) and to feel kindda special, but behind that there's little to nothing. You can do all and everything with a 1px tool here or the pencil in PS. Oh, and a canvas, yes, you need to open a new document. But that's it. A coffee/cereals drink/vegetables juice/tea might be almost essential, more than any othe "feature"...

Anyway, I'd be curious to know about  the need of alignment to grid for pixel  art. Indeed, is very productive to have an isometric grid for isometric pixel art.

 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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