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Pixel Tile Editor

The Pixel Tile Editor is Eldiron’s integrated pixel editor for authored tiles and item icon frames.

It opens when:

  • you click a frame in an item's Icon: On or Icon: Off tree row, or
  • a single tile is selected in the tile picker and you use the top-right Edit / Maximize Dock control, or press Cmd/Ctrl + [

Use the adjacent Restore Dock control or Cmd/Ctrl + ] to return to the normal split layout.

Changes are reflected immediately in the project and on the map or UI.

What It Edits​

The pixel editor works on authored tile textures and item icon state frames. It is used for:

  • painting tile pixels directly
  • editing animated tile frames
  • editing an item's default On frames and optional Off frames
  • selecting and pasting pixel regions
  • updating the final tile that is used in 2D and 3D

Undo / redo belongs to the selected tile or item icon state, so edits in On and Off do not share a history. Use Space to preview the frames of the current state as an animation.

When an item icon initially comes from a tile UUID or alias, opening it copies the resolved tile frames into project-owned icon frames. Painting changes that icon copy, not the source tile. The custom frames are serialized with the item as PNG entries below binaries/items/<item-id>/icons/ in the project archive.

Load Default replaces the customized state frames from the current source: on_tile_id or off_tile_id when mapped, otherwise the ruleset state artwork or ordinary On visual fallback. This means changing the source tile and then using Load Default imports its latest frames. Loading On never changes Off, or vice versa.

Core Tools​

The editor currently has these core tools:

  • Draw Tool (D): paint pixels with the current color
  • Fill Tool (F): flood-fill connected pixels
  • Eraser Tool (E): clear pixels to transparency
  • Selection Tool (S): create, add, or subtract rectangular selections

If a selection exists, drawing, filling, and erasing are limited to that selected area.

Useful Shortcuts​

  • Cmd/Ctrl + C: copy selected pixels, or the whole tile if nothing is selected
  • Cmd/Ctrl + X: cut the current selection
  • Cmd/Ctrl + V: paste image data as a paste preview
  • Enter: apply the current paste preview
  • Escape: cancel the current paste preview
  • H: flip horizontally
  • V: flip vertically
  • F: activate Fill
  • E: activate Eraser
  • Space: toggle animated preview

Paste preview and direct drawing are separate modes. While paste preview is active, place or cancel it first, then continue painting.

Materials And Normals​

Tiles in Eldiron are used in both 2D and 3D. The pixel tile editor edits visible color frames; it does not paint per-pixel render material values.

For authored pixel tiles:

  • editing changes the visible tile texture directly
  • normals are generated from the tile texture data used by Eldiron
  • drawing uses the selected Art Palette color
  • render material comes from high-level material metadata, such as tile presets, Art Palette entry presets, or object overrides

Procedural node groups use the node graph editor instead and can generate height-driven normals from graph output.

Ruleset icon state directories reserve an optional material.png for future artist-authored material data: red is roughness, blue metallic, green emission, and alpha is unused. The editor does not currently load or edit this file.