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PixPal Pro

Overview

PixPal Pro is an advanced, professional-grade material and texture system designed for rapid, flexible colorization and texturing of low-poly 3D assets. Building on the free CC0 PixPal (which uses a single palette texture where UV placement directly locks colors), PixPal Pro removes the fixed-color limitation through powerful tintable regions while adding rich material variety, procedural effects, and game-ready features.

It enables artists and developers to create vibrant, consistent, and highly customizable stylized assets (especially low-poly/cartoon styles) with minimal effort. By placing UVs on specific areas of the palette textures and configuring material instance parameters, you can instantly change colors, add metallic properties, emissive glows, patterns, damage, grunge, and more—without remeshing or duplicating assets.

Key Improvements Over Original PixPal

  • Tintable Colors: 8 Primary + 7 Character tint regions solve the fixed-color limitation. Create material instances to recolor entire asset groups (e.g., all character tops or skin tones) without new meshes.
  • Enhanced Gradients: 256×256 resolution (vs 128×128), temperature-shifted hues (warmer brights, cooler darks), extensive specialized gradients for nature, metals, etc.
  • Material Variety: Built-in metallic variants (matte/shiny), emissive, mirrors, plastics, and animated regions.
  • Procedural Effects: Damage, grunge, patterns, shading, wind (UE), animated LEDs, palette shifting, and more.
  • Performance Controls: Many features are toggleable to bypass shader instructions when unused.

Palette Texture Breakdown

BaseColor.png (256×256)

The core color source with organized regions:

  • Warm > Cool Shift Gradients (large 16×16 blocks): Full hue spectrum with vertical brightness and horizontal saturation variation. Includes a tall grayscale gradient.
  • Metallic Regions (three 7×7 blocks per 36 colors):
  • Matte Metal (high roughness)
  • Medium Metal
  • Shiny Metal (low roughness, polished)
  • Emissive Region (7×7 blocks): Same colors but with emission enabled.
  • Specialized Gradients (12 named categories: Wood, Rocks, Mud/Dirt, Grass, Trees, Autumn, Flowers, Snow/Ice, Metals, Crystals, Water, Explosion/Fire): 32 gradients each (small 4px + detailed 64px tall versions) for easy low-poly use or precise vertical shading.
  • Mirror & Plastic Regions: Tintable with appropriate metallic/roughness presets.
  • Vertical Animated LED Gradients (47 tall strips): For cycling neon, lights, etc.
  • 8 Primary Tint Gradients (13px each): Grayscale on texture; shader tints based on brightness value.
  • 7 Character Tint Gradients (Eyes, Hair, Facial Hair, Skin, Lips, Nails, Mouth): Optimized for character customization.

Emissive.png (256×256)

Mostly black. Copies relevant emissive/LED/fire content from BaseColor so the shader can sample emission independently.

Attributes.png (256×256)

Stores material properties per-pixel:

  • Red: Metallic
  • Green: Roughness
  • Blue: Mask for vertically panning animated LED region

Masks.png (256×256)

  • Identifies tintable areas.
  • Red channel: Bitmask for the 8 Primary tints (powers of 2).
  • Green channel: Bitmask for the 7 Character tints.
  • Blue channel: General tint mask visibility.

Additional Textures

  • Grunge Textures (512×512 grayscale, e.g., T_GrungeDirt_Gray.png, Wood, Stone, Fabric): Used with triplanar mapping to add realistic wear/dirt when GrungeAmount > 0.
  • Pattern Textures (64×64 grayscale, e.g., T_Pattern_Camo_01.png to _09.png): Applied where V > 1.0 on UVs. The shader replaces 5 specific brightness levels (0/63/127/191/255) with up to 5 tintable pattern colors.

Shader Features (Material Instance Parameters)

The shader is highly optimized and feature-rich:

  • Tinting: 8 Primary (Col1Tint–Col8Tint) + 7 Character (EyesTint, HairTint, etc.).
  • Visual Damage: Darkens + distorts mesh with grunge texture (toggleable, configurable intensity/scale/offset).
  • Grunge Effect: Triplanar texturing for stone/wood/fabric look (toggleable).
  • Animated LED Lights: Vertical panning in designated region with speed and EmissivePower control (great for neon, Christmas lights).
  • Palette Shifting: Horizontal/vertical shifts per region (with safeguards).
  • Patterns: 5-color tintable overlays with metallic/roughness/scale/shift controls.
  • Shade Below / Highlight Above: World-normal based ambient occlusion-style lighting.
  • MetallicSmoothness: Global adjustment for metal regions.
  • Vertex Color Shading: Multiplies in painted vertex colors for AO-like effects.
  • Wind (UE only): Simple procedural wind on foliage.
  • Performance Flags: Many effects (DamageEnabled, GrungeEnabled, UVShiftingEnabled, etc.) can be disabled to skip shader code.

Engine Support (v1.0)

  • Unreal Engine 5.x: Fully featured and optimized.
  • Unity 6.x URP: Fully featured (except Wind).
  • Godot 4.x: Early Access — core tinting, patterns, and most features implemented (some engine limitations).
  • Blender: Primary/Character/Pattern tinting + VertexColorShading via drivers (other game-oriented effects omitted).
  • Low-poly stylized games and assets (characters, environments, props).
  • Rapid iteration and color variation without asset duplication.
  • Consistent art direction across large asset packs.
  • Animated emissive elements, damaged/worn looks, and procedural variety.