Step 1 · Source Art

Every project starts here. Step 1 is the front door: you either bring your own 2D art — a PNG, a JPG, or a layered PSD — or describe a scene in words and let the AI draw one. Whichever route you take, Pixploder measures the image, probes its pixel grid to seed the later steps' defaults, and keeps it as the source every later step works from. Art you bring in has one hard limit — 4096 px on its longest side — and there is no style switch to set: the editor always works in pixel art. You are done the moment a working image is loaded and the right panel flips from Source Art to Source Art Review, the read-out that reports your source size and points you on to extending, segmenting, or a clean restart.

Bring in your own art

The left pane is headed Source Art and reads Upload a 2D art scene (PNG, JPG or layered PSD) — any style — or generate one with AI from the right panel. With nothing loaded yet it offers one way in for art you already have — free, and handled entirely inside your browser.

• Upload your 2D game art — the large dashed dropzone (Drag & drop or click to select a background or sprite-sheet image. PNG, JPG or layered PSD.). Drop a file onto it or click to browse. Until you roll a generation, the right panel points at it in one line: Already have layered art? Drop a .psd or .psb straight on the upload box — each layer becomes a sprite, no AI.
• A flat image (PNG, JPG, and anything else your browser decodes) — Pixploder reads the file locally, sizes the canvas to the image, probes its style, clears any elements from before, and switches the right panel to Source Art Review.
• A layered PSD (.psd or .psb) — routed by its file extension, so a drop and a picked file behave the same. The flattened composite becomes your source image, and every raster layer becomes a ready-made element carrying its name, its position, and its own cut-out pixels — so you land directly on Step 5 · Finish Sprites with extending, locating and segmenting already behind you. If you already have layered art, this is the fastest route to game-ready sprites.

The dropzone owns the empty left pane, so as soon as a generation exists the preview takes that space and the dropzone is gone until you start over — the Upload a PNG / JPG / PSD button in the right panel is the route from then on.

Generate a scene with AI

The right panel carries the same Source Art heading and reads Describe a scene to generate with AI, or drop your own PNG/JPG on the left. Any art style works. It turns a description into a brand-new scene. This is the one credit-spending action on the step, and results stack up, so you can roll several before committing to one.

1. Prompt box — opens pre-filled with an example (A cozy forest clearing with a small wooden cabin at sunset.). Replace it with your own scene, in any art style. reset prompt, at the right of the Generate a scene with AI heading, puts the example back; emptied, the box shows the hint Describe the scene you want to generate — any art style… and Generate stays disabled.
2. AI model — which AI draws the scene. Today the list holds a single entry, labeled with the model's id, its per-image price in credits, and recommended. Your pick is remembered in this browser.
3. Aspect — the shape of the output: 16:9 (the default), 1:1, 4:3, 3:2, 9:16, or 21:9. Your source art does not have to keep this shape — Step 2 · Extend Canvas can reframe it later.
4. Generate · 26 credits — spends the credits and draws one scene. While it runs the button reads Generating… and the left pane shows Generating your scene… above This usually takes 10–30 seconds. The finished image is added to Your generations and previewed on the left.

The line under the button is the short version of all of it: Tip: name the subject, setting & palette. Click a result to preview it, then “Use this image”.

A paid run opens a confirmation first: Use 26 credits? names the cost and your remaining balance, offers a Don't ask again this session checkbox, and waits for Use 26 credits or Cancel — backing out spends nothing, and the confirmation comes back on every run until you tick that box. If your plan or your balance cannot cover the run, a Heads up dialog explains why (Your plan doesn't include AI generations. Upgrade to Pro., or This needs 26 credits but you have …) and offers See plans next to Got it instead. And when no model is on offer for scene generation, an amber Scene generation is temporarily unavailable — try again later. line appears above the button, the picker reads AI model unavailable, and Generate stays disabled. A run the server itself stops — generation paused across Pixploder — is refused before anything is charged, in the same dialog: Pixploder is under maintenance — generation is paused for a moment. Nothing was charged.

Your generations

Every scene you roll stacks into a grid under the Generate button, newest first, with a running count in the Your generations heading. The 24 most recent are kept, and they are stored with your project, so a saved project brings its stack back when you reload. Comparing them and committing one is free — the credits went at Generate time.

• Thumbnail — click one to preview it large on the left. A fuchsia border marks the selected thumbnail; hovering one shows the prompt that made it.
• Restore this prompt — the clipboard icon at the bottom of a thumbnail. It copies that result's prompt back into the prompt box, ready to tweak and re-roll.
• Save (download + keep in project) — the download icon beside it. It downloads the PNG immediately and, when you are signed in and the work is in a saved project, also keeps it in that project's saved images. A green ✓ in a thumbnail's corner marks a result already saved that way.
• Use this image — under the large preview on the left. It commits the previewed generation as your working image and flips the right panel to Source Art Review. The generate controls go with it, so rolling more scenes after that means starting over with ↺ Replace image.
• Upload a PNG / JPG / PSD — once at least one generation exists, an or upload your own divider adds a second upload button to the panel, for when you would rather drop the rolls and use your own file after all. The line under it reads A layered PSD becomes sprites (one per layer, no AI) and opens Finish Sprites. — a .psd or .psb picked here behaves exactly like the dropzone: every layer becomes a sprite, no AI runs, and you land on Step 5 · Finish Sprites.

Pixel art, and what the detector decides

There is no style switch to get wrong: Pixploder works in pixel art on every project. Prompts for new art carry a fixed pixel-art instruction, art the editor scales up is stepped up nearest-neighbor rather than blurred, mask cut-outs come out hard-edged rather than feathered, and every export declares crisp nearest texture filtering.

A local detector still reads your art the moment it lands — upload, generation, or PSD import — and it still picks two starting points for you. Both are ordinary settings from then on, changed on the step that owns them:

• ★ Repixelize on Step 7 · Final Polish starts switched on when your art reads as pixel art — a measured grid, hard 1:1 pixels with no anti-aliasing, or the grid-less pixel-art look — and off when it does not. That is the pass that bakes the whole scene back onto a grid at a size you choose.
• The keyer's Soft edges switch on Step 5 · Finish Sprites starts off for art that reads as pixel art — the hard, on-or-off silhouette — and on, with a light feather, for art that does not, so a smooth-edged upload is not cut into ragged alpha on the first pass.

The same reading decides one thing that is not a starting point, because it has no dial at all: the shadow block size on Step 6 · Add Shadows is the pixel cell the detector measured, clamped to 8 px — art drawn at 2 px cells casts 2 px shadow blocks — and when there is no cell to read the block is simply native, 1 px, whatever size the document is. That one is re-measured from your art every time a source canvas is installed, including on project load, so it is the same number today and next week.

The verdict itself is not written down anywhere in the interface, and it is not stored with the project; the two settings it seeded are, and they are yours from the first time you touch them.

Source Art Review

Once an image is in — uploaded, or generated and committed with Use this image — the right panel becomes Source Art Review and the left pane shows your source on an alpha checkerboard, under the line Check the art you're about to cut up. Scroll to zoom · middle-drag, right-drag or Alt+drag to pan. The % chip at the top right of that pane reports the zoom and resets both zoom and pan when clicked.

• Dimensions — the source pixel size, written as W x H px.
• Elements — how many elements the project holds. It reads Uncalculated while there are none, so a fresh upload or generation shows Uncalculated until Step 3 · Find & Cut finds some — a PSD import arrives with its layers already counted.
• Continue to Extend Canvas — the main button; moves you to Step 2 · Extend Canvas.
• Skip — go straight to Find & Cut — jumps past extending to Step 3 · Find & Cut. Use it when the scene is already framed the way you want it.
• ↺ Replace image — at the bottom of the panel, starts the project over. It is the only control that wipes this project's work back to a blank Step 1, and it lives only here.

With a working image committed, Continue to Extend Canvas carries the scene into Step 2 · Extend Canvas — or Skip straight to segmenting when the framing already fits.