About Pixel Machine - Convert 3D to 2D
- Tools, Systems & Learning > Development Tools & Automation
- Theme > Retro & Arcade
Pixel Machine turns 3D models into finished 2D sprite assets, automatically. Point it at a prefab, press Capture, and it renders every frame of every animation through your scene camera into pixel-perfect sprites, then builds the animation clips, animator controller and prefab around them. Drag the result into a scene and it plays immediately.
Because the source is still a 3D model, iteration is cheap. Swap a mesh, retune a light, add an animation clip, and re-capture the entire set with one button. Batch capture re-renders a whole cast of characters or a full set of props with identical settings in a single run.
The process is purely render based. No generative AI is used in the conversion process.
Capture anything:
- Animation capture: sample any animation clip at any frame rate. Humanoid rigs, root motion and blend shapes all sample correctly.
- Rotation capture: render 8, 16 or any number of facings around an axis for top-down and isometric units, vehicles and props.
- Single frame capture: one clean still for items, icons, pickups and scenery.
- Custom processes: extend a single C# base class to capture exploded views, damage states, material variants, weapon attachments or anything else you can describe.
Sprites that react to light:
Flat images do not take lighting. Pixel Machine fixes that by capturing each frame again with special materials and attaching the results to the sprite as Unity secondary textures, so they survive atlas packing and reach your shader automatically.
- Normal maps so 2D lights shade the sprite as if it were still 3D.
- Depth maps for depth-aware sorting, intersection effects and rim lighting.
- Signed distance fields for outlines, glows and edge effects that stay even around thin details and sharp corners.
- Baked outlines of any width and color, generated from the distance field rather than by dilating pixels.
Built for pixel art:
Output is imported point-filtered, uncompressed and without mipmaps. Frames are written as individual PNG sprites with the pivot, pixels-per-unit, sorting order and sort point you specify. Generated prefabs come with a Sprite Renderer, an Animator, and an optional custom sprite material for lit or SDF rendering.
Fully customizable:
Capture settings live on a Capture Manager in your scene. What to capture lives in reusable, version-controlled Capture Process assets. One manager and many processes give an entire project a consistent look. Bundled Shader Graph shaders include toon, diffuse and masked model shaders for a stylized cel-shaded result, plus the normal, depth, outline and SDF capture shaders.
Ideal for:
Retro and pixel-art games, top-down and isometric RPGs, strategy games, roguelikes, tower defense, 2D platformers, and any project that wants the look of hand-placed sprites with the flexibility of a 3D pipeline. Prototype in 3D, ship in 2D.
Includes:
- Editor tool with Capture Manager and three built-in capture processes
- Custom capture process API with a documented example
- Four sample scenes covering every workflow
- Full documentation
Requirements:
Unity 6.0 or later. The bundled capture shaders target the Universal Render Pipeline. Base sprite capture works on any pipeline; supply your own normal and depth materials on Built-in or HDRP. Pixel Machine is an editor-only tool and does not run in player builds.
Because the source is still a 3D model, iteration is cheap. Swap a mesh, retune a light, add an animation clip, and re-capture the entire set with one button. Batch capture re-renders a whole cast of characters or a full set of props with identical settings in a single run.
The process is purely render based. No generative AI is used in the conversion process.
Capture anything:
- Animation capture: sample any animation clip at any frame rate. Humanoid rigs, root motion and blend shapes all sample correctly.
- Rotation capture: render 8, 16 or any number of facings around an axis for top-down and isometric units, vehicles and props.
- Single frame capture: one clean still for items, icons, pickups and scenery.
- Custom processes: extend a single C# base class to capture exploded views, damage states, material variants, weapon attachments or anything else you can describe.
Sprites that react to light:
Flat images do not take lighting. Pixel Machine fixes that by capturing each frame again with special materials and attaching the results to the sprite as Unity secondary textures, so they survive atlas packing and reach your shader automatically.
- Normal maps so 2D lights shade the sprite as if it were still 3D.
- Depth maps for depth-aware sorting, intersection effects and rim lighting.
- Signed distance fields for outlines, glows and edge effects that stay even around thin details and sharp corners.
- Baked outlines of any width and color, generated from the distance field rather than by dilating pixels.
Built for pixel art:
Output is imported point-filtered, uncompressed and without mipmaps. Frames are written as individual PNG sprites with the pivot, pixels-per-unit, sorting order and sort point you specify. Generated prefabs come with a Sprite Renderer, an Animator, and an optional custom sprite material for lit or SDF rendering.
Fully customizable:
Capture settings live on a Capture Manager in your scene. What to capture lives in reusable, version-controlled Capture Process assets. One manager and many processes give an entire project a consistent look. Bundled Shader Graph shaders include toon, diffuse and masked model shaders for a stylized cel-shaded result, plus the normal, depth, outline and SDF capture shaders.
Ideal for:
Retro and pixel-art games, top-down and isometric RPGs, strategy games, roguelikes, tower defense, 2D platformers, and any project that wants the look of hand-placed sprites with the flexibility of a 3D pipeline. Prototype in 3D, ship in 2D.
Includes:
- Editor tool with Capture Manager and three built-in capture processes
- Custom capture process API with a documented example
- Four sample scenes covering every workflow
- Full documentation
Requirements:
Unity 6.0 or later. The bundled capture shaders target the Universal Render Pipeline. Base sprite capture works on any pipeline; supply your own normal and depth materials on Built-in or HDRP. Pixel Machine is an editor-only tool and does not run in player builds.