Make a spell effect sprite sheet

Last updated: October 12, 2026

Make a spell effect, such as a frost nova, as a short frame-by-frame animation packed into one sprite sheet your engine can slice. The Layer agent draws every frame from one approved key frame and packs them for you.

What you'll make

One sprite sheet PNG: six to eight frames of one effect, from the first spark to the last sparkle, in uniform cells laid out left to right and top to bottom. Every frame is drawn at the same canvas size around the same centre, so the effect plays in place. The effect sits on pure black, ready for additive blending in the engine, or on transparency after a background removal pass.

Before you start

  • An approved key frame: the effect at its peak, centred, with margin on every side, on a pure black background. Make it with Create images; ask for pure solid black background, nothing else in the image.
  • A frame list: the beats of the effect in order, for example spark, forming, peak, shatter, sparkles, fade. Six frames read as motion; add more only once six work.
  • The frames are generations and cost Creative Units; packing the sheet does not. See Creative Units.

Brief the agent

The agent plans the frames, runs them, waits for your review and packs the sheet, all in one session. Work with the Layer agent covers the agent in detail.

  1. On Home, click + (Add to prompt) in the composer, choose Attach files or photos and pick the key frame.

  2. Write the brief: the frame list, the background, that every frame is drawn from the key frame, and the sheet layout. For example: Turn this frost nova into a 6-frame effect animation: spark, forming, this frame as the peak, shatter, sparkles, fade. Each frame its own image on pure black, same canvas and centre, drawn from this frame. Then pack all six into a 3 by 2 sprite sheet.

  3. Send it. The agent opens a session and shows its plan with the cost in an Approve generation card.

  4. Click Approve.

Check the frames

  1. The frames run side by side and land on the board as they finish.

  2. Review them in order as a set: the effect should grow, peak and fade around one centre, in one palette. If a frame drifted (a different color, shifted off centre, cut by the edge), ask the agent to redo that frame from the key frame.

  3. When the set reads well, tell the agent in the chat to pack the sheet.

Pack the sheet

  1. The agent packs the frames into one sheet in the order you gave, every frame centred in a cell of one size, and puts the sheet on the board. To change the layout later, ask for it, for example repack them as one row or add 8 pixels of padding between cells.

  2. For an effect that needs real transparency rather than black, ask the agent to remove the background from each frame before packing. Glows and sparkles lose their faint edges in a cut-out, so check the result on a dark and a light background.

Hand it off

Open the sheet and use Download for the PNG as packed. Note the grid (columns and rows) and the cell size the agent reports: that is what the engine slices by.

Unity

Import as Sprite (2D and UI), set Sprite Mode to Multiple, and in the Sprite Editor slice by Grid By Cell Count with the sheet's columns and rows. Drag the slices into the scene to make an animation clip. For a sheet on black, use a material with an additive particle shader so black reads as clear.

Unreal Engine

Import the sheet as a texture and play it as a SubUV animation in a Niagara sprite emitter, with the sub-image size set to the sheet's columns and rows. Use an additive material for a sheet on black.

Godot

Use the sheet as the texture of an AnimatedSprite2D through a SpriteFrames resource (add frames from the sprite sheet with the sheet's horizontal and vertical counts), or set Hframes and Vframes on a Sprite2D. For a sheet on black, give it a CanvasItemMaterial with Blend Mode set to Add.

Scale it up

  • Hold a VFX style. Train a reference set on your approved effects, with its category set to visual effect, and attach it to every key frame, so fire, frost and lightning look like one game. See Create a reference set.
  • Write it down once. Save the brief as a skill, with your frame count, background and sheet layout, and run it for each effect with a slash command. See Write a skill.
  • Smoother motion. For effects that need many in-between frames, animate the key frame with Create a video on a locked camera and a black background, export it with Download as... as a PNG Sequence, and pack the frames you want in your sprite tool, or bring them back and ask the agent to pack them.
  • Review in motion. Play the sheet in the engine at game speed before it ships; a frame that looks fine on its own can pop in motion.

If something goes wrong

  • The effect jumps around between frames. A frame was drawn off centre or from the frame before it. Ask for that frame again, from the key frame, at the same canvas and centre.
  • The effect is cut off at the cell edge. The key frame filled its frame. Make the key frame again with the effect filling about two thirds of it, then redo the frames.
  • The black background shows in the game. The material uses normal alpha blending. Switch it to additive, or ask the agent to remove the background from each frame and pack again.
  • The frames do not read as one effect. The palette or shapes drifted. Name the palette and the shapes in the brief, and attach a trained effect reference set.

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