Getting started with Spriteoven

Five minutes from sign-up to your first exported sprite sheet. Prefer help inside the app? Open the Guide (the ? button in the header, or /?guide=1) — it mirrors this page and covers every tab.

1. Sign up

Spriteoven is free. Click Sign in in the top right corner of the app and pick one of three paths:

• Email + password — fastest if you want a stable login.
• Magic link — drop your email, we send a one-tap sign-in link.
• Google — single click via OAuth.

No credit card. No "free trial" countdown. The free tier stays free.

2. Generate your first sprite

Open the Sprite Lab tab — this is where every character, animation and direction is baked. It runs as a two-step card:

1. Step 1 · Your canonical character. Type your idea in Describe your character (e.g. "a small knight with a sword and a red cape"), set Style / Species / Quality, then lock an anchor one of three ways:

   • Generate from prompt — 1 generation (~$0.07), uses your description.
   • Import image — bring your own PNG/JPG, no generation.
   • From Library — reuse a saved character, no generation.

   A ready anchor shows a green ✓ Ready badge. That anchor is the reusable identity — every animation is built on top of it and it is never redrawn.

2. Step 2 · Animate (unlocks once an anchor is Ready). Pick an Action (walk / idle / run / jump / attack) and a Frames count, then in the directions visor choose ⊞ All Set (bakes 4 or 8 directions at once) or ▶ One direction. West-facing views come free as ⇋ mirrors of their East side.

Each finished animation auto-saves to your Library (you'll see ✓ Saved to Library), and you can export it (next section).

For iconpacks use the Items tab; for tilesets use the Maps tab.

3. Free tier and credits

The free tier runs on NB2 (Gemini) — solid quality, zero cost — plus 8 GPT Image 2 "wow-gens" included one-time (no card). For higher-fidelity sheets and more consistent silhouettes beyond that, buy Spriteoven credits for the GPT Image 2 / Grok / Imagen path.

• 1 credit = 1 generation.
• Failed generations are auto-refunded.
• Credits do not expire.

Spriteoven holds the relationship with each provider — no BYOK key forms. Buy credits from the coin widget in the header, Buy credits in the user menu, or the footer link to the pricing page (/?pricing=1). Pack prices and top-up sizes always live on that page, so check it there rather than trusting a number copied here.

4. Outputs explained

In Sprite Lab Step 2, tick one or more export formats before you download:

• png-sliced — a .zip with the sheet, every frame as its own PNG, and a metadata.json map. Best for Unity and any generic engine.
• tres — a Godot 4 SpriteFrames resource (.tres) plus sheet.png. Drop it onto an AnimatedSprite2D.
• godot-bundle — a .zip with the sheet, the .tres and a README. The most drop-in option for Godot 4.
• aseprite-bundle — a .zip that opens in Aseprite for frame-by-frame retouching.

Rule of thumb: Godot → godot-bundle; Aseprite → aseprite-bundle; Unity or anything else → png-sliced. No manual slicing needed.

5. Next steps

• Tilesets — the Maps tab generates seamless tilesets. Set a biome, a tile size (16 / 24 / 32 / 48 / 64 px) and a tile count, then pick an auto-tile rule: blob (47 tiles, the full Godot 4 terrain set), wang (16-tile corner set) or none. It hands you a .zip bundle with the sheet, tileset.tres and tilemap-rules.json — you wire that into a Godot 4 TileSet terrain (Maps produces the files; it does not paint maps in-app).
• Iconpacks — the Items tab generates batched, style-coherent icons (weapons / shields / consumables / UI) as a .zip bundle with a Godot 4 .tres + .tscn.
• Edition — the editing bench: reorder / duplicate / delete frames and add AI in-between frames, all auto-saved.
• Play — take a baked character for a test run (Arrow keys move, Shift runs, Space jumps, Z/X attack).

Troubleshooting

Stuck? Email support@spriteoven.com — there's a small inbox and Fer reads every message.