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 — the catalogue has eight (idle · walk · run · jump · attack · defend · hurt · die) and a Custom action where you type what you want in your own words — 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: of the 8 directions, 5 are generated and 3 are mirrored for $0.

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

The other five forges work the same way, each in its own tab: Maps (biome tilesets), Items (item sets and gear), FX (effects that layer over a sprite), Deco (big pieces that sit on the map) and UI Kit (pieces for your game's interface). All six share the same 7-rung style ladder, so a whole game can be baked in one look.

3. Free tier and credits

The free tier is 8 generations on the house, one-time, no card. The allowance is counted in generations, so what uses it up is how much you ask for, not what you ask for it with. After that, buy Spriteoven credits.

Every generation is billable. There is no cheaper draft lane to fall back to: what a run costs is decided by Quality and by how much you asked for, and the number is on the forge button before you click it.

• You always see the exact price before you spend it — the forge button shows the total for the run before you click.
• Generations are priced by Quality: High = 1 credit, Ultra = 3.
• Maps and item sets are priced per run: a biome is 6 credits (12 terrain variants included), each prop pack +3, an item set 1 at High / 2 at Ultra — plus one generation per animated item if you animate any.
• 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:

The picker is three tabs — General, Godot and Unity.

• png-sliced (General) — a .zip with the sheet, every frame as its own PNG, and a metadata.json map. Works with any engine.
• godot-bundle (Godot) — a .zip with the sheet, the .tres and a README. The most drop-in option for Godot 4.
• tres (Godot) — a Godot 4 SpriteFrames resource plus sheet.png. Drop it onto an AnimatedSprite2D in an existing project.
• Unity project (.zip) (Unity) — a minimal Unity project with ProjectSettings and Packages, ready to add in Unity Hub. Built for Unity 6.x LTS.
• Unity Raw ZIP (Unity) — the sprite assets, .meta files, clips and a README, for manual extraction under your Assets/.
• aseprite-bundle (General) — a .zip that opens in Aseprite for frame-by-frame retouching.

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

A .unitypackage needs the Unity Editor, which the server does not run — so Unity export ships the minimal project and the Raw ZIP instead.

5. Next steps

• Tilesets — the Maps tab generates seamless tilesets. Describe a biome, optionally name the terrain it borders, and pick a tile size (32 / 48 / 64 / 96 / 128 px; default 64). There is no tile count and no auto-tile rule to choose: every biome ships the full 47-tile blob set — the Godot 4 terrain set — with 12 terrain variants so large areas do not read as one repeating stamp. 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). Group biomes into a world and their borders blend.
• 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.