Sprite Forge is an Unreal Engine editor plugin built for developers who want to create 2D game art without constantly leaving the engine.
I built Sprite Forge because the normal 2D workflow can feel disconnected. You paint in one program, export files, import them into Unreal, test them, realize something is wrong, go back to the art program, export again, reimport again, and repeat that loop over and over.
Sprite Forge brings that workflow directly into Unreal.
Create sprite assets, paint pixel art, build animation strips, manage layers, preview lighting, work with palettes, use reference images, project 3D meshes into 2D, and export game-ready artwork from inside the editor.
It is designed for artists, solo developers, technical artists, and teams who want a more direct way to build sprites, icons, props, tiles, UI art, and animated 2D assets for Unreal projects.
What Sprite Forge can do:
• Create and edit custom Sprite Forge assets inside Unreal Engine
• Paint directly on a canvas with raster tools
• Work with layers, cels, frames, and animation strips
• Build idle, walk, attack, effect, UI, and prop animations
• Use palettes, color tools, RGBA sliders, HSV controls, and hex input
• Preview sprite lighting using light objects and normal-map-style workflows
• Use sculpting brushes for normal-map channel work
• Import and use reference images while creating sprites
• Use Static Meshes and Skeletal Meshes as 3D projection sources
• Turn 3D mesh references into sprite-oriented artwork
• Create tile-canvas assets and export tile-based outputs
• Export sprites, frames, animation strips, Sprite Sheets, and project-ready image files
• Use built-in documentation directly inside the editor
Sprite Forge is especially useful for:
• Pixel art
• Isometric sprites
• Game icons
• Item art
• UI sprites
• Animated props
• Character animation strips
• Environmental tiles
• 3D-to-2D sprite workflows
• Normal-map-assisted 2D art
• Unreal-native 2D asset pipelines
This is not meant to replace every professional art program overnight. Sprite Forge is meant to make Unreal feel like a better home for 2D game asset creation.
For developers building 2D, 2.5D, hybrid, pixel-art, tactics, RPG, roguelike, or isometric games in Unreal, Sprite Forge gives you a dedicated sprite creation workspace where your art tools live next to your game.
Make the sprite. Animate it. Preview it. Export it. Use it.
All without leaving Unreal Engine.
We hope to continue support for Sprite Forge for many years to come, and we hope to continue improving Unreal's 2D workflow (we would love to dig into the runtime with Sprite Forge eventually). I love this engine, and I want to see it used for 2D games more as there is so much potential, and as of now we are just scratching the surface. For us to continue to create new functionality and fix issues we need feedback. This can be in the form of reviews, Feature requests, bug reports, etc... You can leave them down below, or email us at UnrealGameAssist@gmail.com.
Disclaimer : Sprite Forge has been a fun 2 year, multi-refactor undertaking. This was very ambitious for a 2 man team. We tested the software at multiple points in the project for functionality and crash resistance on Windows and Linux platforms in very narrow scope. The scope was 2D Pixel Art Game Development, even though Sprite Forge can do so much more. As a result, you may stumble upon bugs that we did not encounter in our testing, or the handful of Beta testers we used. If you do, PLEASE submit a bug report to UnrealGameAssist@gmail.com with the following Text-Only format :
[Bug Description]
[Steps to Reproduce]
[Expected Behavior]
[Crash Report if a Crash Occurred]
Please note we will not Download any files/attachments sent.
The project has had a "Best Attempt" localization pass for multiple languages. If we got something wrong there, let us know!
Needs a video of an artist making something shippable with it from start to finish.
We are working on that right now actually (First preliminary video should come out next Saturday evening for just the demonstration timelapse). After that we want to make a tutorial series on workflow from editor to runtime (Side-Scroller or top down sprite character moving). I will update you when we have it. We have a hotfix in que though so I want the artist to have the version everyone else will use.
I am drastically embarrassed of my workflow so I didn’t get a video of putting this together but I really like the functionality! It’s just for a small scale shop sim so I’m mostly just throwing paint (or pixels) at the wall and seeing what sticks while learning the program. Here’s a screen grab of the window.
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Here’s the .png and I’ll add a screen grab of the texture asset.
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