Software with Custom Brushes

Aseprite is a pixel art editor built around sprite work: an indexed-color workflow, onion skinning and a timeline for animation, tilemap layers, custom brushes, and export straight to sprite sheets. Extensions and Lua scripts add anything it lacks. It is the editor most Lospec artists reach for first.

A general purpose image editor that can be set up for pixel art: nearest neighbour scaling, pencil tool, indexed color mode. Animation is awkward, but the flexibility lets you mimic advanced tools such as index painting.

GrafX2 was made for DOS and has been ported everywhere since. It has tools no other program does, constraints for retro platforms, and an antiquated interface.

Novaboard runs in the browser and as a desktop app, with layers, animation and effects.

Pro Motion NG is inspired by Amiga Deluxe Paint and used in commercial game studios. It has a detached-window interface, deep palette and tile tools, and an animation workflow tuned for sprite production.

A multi-purpose image editor designed as a free replacement for Photoshop. It can be configured for pixel art with the pencil tool, indexed mode and nearest neighbour scaling.

Resprite is a pixel art and animation editor for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS, built around a touch interface without losing the tools a desktop editor has: pixel-perfect lines, alpha lock, dithering patterns, custom brushes, gradients and symmetry. It imports and exports GIF, sprite sheets, PSD and APNG.

Deluxe Paint was the paint program of the Amiga era and the tool a great deal of 1980s and 1990s game art was made in. Its custom brushes, palette cycling and animation features set conventions that pixel art editors still follow, and its keyboard-driven workflow is why so many later programs feel the way they do. It is no longer sold; the versions that survive do so through archives and emulation.

If you are tired of wrestling with clunky pipelines just to get that crisp, nostalgic retro look for your 3D assets, SH Pixelation Studio is built for you. Whether you are crafting indie low-poly retro games, stylized animations, or unique pixel art, this studio gives you complete control over downsampling, color palettes, and surface texturing without destroying your source geometry.

🔥 Key Features & Capabilities

Load Your Model: No complicated file routing or deep directory searches. Simply load your GLTF, GLB, OBJ, FBX or Image directly into the studio workspace and watch them load instantly.

Dual-Viewport Workspaces: Inspect your models from multiple angles simultaneously using independently orbitable viewports and side-by-side or stacked layouts.

Advanced Pixel & Dither Engine: Dial in your exact pixel size, choose from classic dithering matrices (Bayer, Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson, and more), and posterize colors on the fly.

Submesh Targeting: Isolate specific submeshes and turn off the texture or the model part itself so you can pixelate even more accurately!

Over 500+ Grounded Color Palettes: Instantly remap your model's tonal clusters using hand-curated palette libraries ranging from retro hardware systems to cyberpunk neon and military camo.

Surface Paint Layers: Layer carbon fiber, honeycomb, scanlines, or custom stencils directly onto your surfaces with adjustable opacity and blend modes.

Looking to try before you buy?
Check out the official Demo version available on itch.io page! While advanced features like bulk batch processing and uncompressed high-res outputs are locked to the full version, the demo lets you test the core pixelation engine on your own 3D models and images. Perfect for indie developers searching for a fast, reliable tool to generate retro pixel art, low-poly textures, and PSX-style aesthetic assets for Unity, Unreal, Godot, or custom game engines.

Surface Paint Layer

Making it easier to add details without having to leave the software!

You can simply upload your own image or apply the presets press STAMP and you'll see in real time how pixelation affects your new effect.

UI Colors

Make it yours!

UI colors that you can change making it feel easier for you to pixelate in your own vibe, with your own color!

Colors come in 6 variations and they are muted/soft to not feel like they'll blind you or take your attention too much.

Tone Map

Less reasons to leave and more reasons to stay!

Tone map has presets that make your life easier, why worry about how your model looks like due to swatches that feel darker/lighter than others when you can just adjust the tone map yourself!

Isolate & Hide

Struggling to understand how your model looks like inside a different part of the mesh? Maybe your texture is too bright and you want to make it less of an issue and that's where Isolation or Hiding of the texture comes in handy.

Since it's an easy-to-use 3D Canvas, isolation comes in handy because you can zoom/rotate and look exactly where you want to without seeing parts of the mesh blocking you!

Isolate & Hide parts as you please, this option was made to simplify your life instead of asking yourself "How do I know how my UV texture looks inside?!"

Swatches Blend Mode

Swatch Palettes usually come in lots of variations, you have medieval, gothic, nostalgia, anime and many many maaaaany more but the issue is that... usually your texture looks amazing already, right? You made it so of course it looks amazing.

Therefore, the process of adding a new palette of colors ONTO your model should feel almost as if it's upgrading your model instead of changing it completely . . . WHICH Is why Swatch Blend Mode exists, to simplify your life and beautify your already pixel perfect model.

Batch Import & Export and UI Updates.

Batch import and export is here! Now you can work on 5-10-20-30-100??? models at the same time and export all of them with folders and sub-folders. Upgrading your workflow with easy access, batch upload, download and save states that allow you to take a pause and come back later to continue on your work.