This application will allow you to test your normal maps for 2D sprites and spritesheets very easily. If you need any feedback or to test fixes, don't hesitate to contact me. When setting up normal maps for pixel art and other stylized sprites, it is often annoying to set up different tools and engine projects simply to test the maps which are probably yet to be adjusted.

That would be very helpful to wrap your head around what a color will really do when lighted. This is achieved by the artist painting an object lit from several directions, images called lighting profiles, and then processing them into normal maps. This capture shows the difference between the 2 colors, the first one (in the red circle), actually on the image, and the second, produced with the color wheel:Īs per my tests, the color produced with Aseprite normal color wheel are not correct when the texture is imported in a program to light them.Īs an added request, while testing some other programs to edit normal map I found one that shows a wireframe 3D square around the color selected on the wheel, clearly giving the information of the direction of the normal.

The new color is different from the previous one.

Animation facilities, with real-time preview and onion skinning. Support for color profiles and different color modes: RGBA, Indexed (palettes up to 256 colors), Grayscale. Sprites are composed of layers & frames as separated concepts.

with the normal map palette selected, try to select the same color by clicking at the spot highlighted with a small circle on the color wheel. Aseprite is a program to create animated sprites.

select a color with the color picker, preferably not at the center.

It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and features different tools for image and animation editing such as layers, frames, tilemap support, command-line interface, Lua scripting, among others.

import a normal map sphere (the one from the wikipedia page for example) in aseprite Aseprite is a proprietary, source-available image editor designed primarily for pixel art drawing and animation.

I tried to use the normal color wheel to select colors between 2 already known and working colors, but it doesn't work at all. The new color is different from the previous one. with the normal map palette selected, try to select the same color by clicking at the spot highlighted with a small circle on the color wheel. select a color with the color picker, preferably not at the center. The color selected on the color wheel seem to not match the desired orientation when tested in Unity with default 3D lights. import a normal map sphere (the one from the wikipedia page for example) in aseprite. When selecting a color with the color picker on the image of a normal map sphere, produced outside of Aseprite, the colors selected do not match the one displayed on the color picker. Here is the easiest way that I have found for making normal maps for pixel art sprites, with a bit of experimentation and practice Im sure this is a method.

Aseprite normal map