Normal maps for pixel art
Put a torch in your game and your pixel art goes flat. Normal maps are the fix — and hand-painting one per sprite is a week you don't have.
Why it matters
Moving light is what makes a scene feel like a place. Without normal maps your sprites take the same light from every angle, so the lamp you spent a week on reads as a coloured circle on a flat wall. This is the difference between a lit scene and a tinted one.
Every other tool guesses depth from brightness, which turns dark hair into a dent and every sprite into stamped tin. We follow the shading the artist already committed to — so what comes out is the same character, lit.
Godot, Unity, or the one you wrote yourself. Correct suffix, correct convention, alpha untouched. Minutes of work, not a pipeline project — and nothing about your existing setup has to change.
What it costs
Free 20 credits, no account
Around five sprites, every model. Enough to see whether it works on your art before you decide anything.
$5 a month, 5,000 credits
Thousands of sprites or a couple of dozen full sheets, every month. Cancel whenever.
$20 a month, 50,000 credits
For the ones shipping a game. Ten times the credits for four times the price — in practice, don't think about it.
A credit is one 64×64 sprite; bigger images count by area, so a 64×128 is two and a full 1024×1024 sheet is 256. Trying every model on the same sprite is free. Prices in US dollars; VAT added where it applies.
Try it
Your first sprites are free, no account needed. Drop one here and we'll open it in Studio, where you can compare the models before you download.