Top Down Sprite Maker (TDSM) is the ultimate pixel art character creator. Developers that care about an unrivalled degree of control, extensibility, and customization need look no further!

Sprite styles

While most similar programs are built around a specific sprite style (art style, directions, supported animations, etc.), TDSM is built to support multiple sprite styles. Furthermore, these sprite styles can be distributed as ZIP files, and can thus be created, modified, and shared by the community.

Note: Sprite styles featured in promotional images and videos are freely available but distributed separately.

Flexibility

TDSM sprite styles define their own composition layers, supported directions (whether 4, 6, or 8), and animations.

Getting and using sprite styles

The program launches with a basic "Default" 8-directional 32-bit sprite style that acts as a sort of tech demo.

You can download/buy additional sprite styles online. A collection of sprite styles made or approved by the developer is linked in the Help menus at About -> Help -> Get more sprite styles -> Approved collection. Sprite styles inspired by established IPs, such as Pokémon, are always distributed for free.

Making your own sprite styles

Making sprite styles for TDSM consists of two main components:

• Programming a manifest script file that defines the sprite style's composition logic
  
• Drawing the assets that are composed according to the rules defined in the script

Scripts are written in DeltaScript (a scripting language designed by the developer) and the TDSM scripting API.

Features

Customize

TDSM gives you complete freedom to customize every facet of your character, yet the sprite assembly rules still ensure that sprites always look good and production-ready.

• Controlled randomization: Generate random sprites with the click of a button. Randomization can be constrained by locking customization layers you wish to exclude.
  
• Smart layering rules: Customization layers update dynamically based on changes to other layers they depend on.

Configure

Configure your sprite sheet to your exact needs. Have TDSM adapt to your existing projects rather than having to rework code or sprite sheet slicing configurations.

• Sizing: Crop or pad individual sprites to your liking, ranging from 1x1 px to 128x128 px
  
• Sequencing: Determine which directions and animations to include in the export, and in which order
  
• Layout: Determine the axis along which directions and animations are exported in the sprite sheet, as well as how distinct animations follow one another

Export

Export sprite sheets and associated data from TDSM in seconds.

• Sprite sheet as a PNG image
  
• Sprite sheet metadata as JSON (optional)
  
• Sprite sheet with customization layers separated as Stipple Effect project (optional)

Save and load sprite data

Sprite customization data can be loaded into TDSM by uploading a JSON metadata file that matches a sprite style present in the current program session.