Make an isometric tileset for your engine

Last updated: October 13, 2026

Make the ground, road and building tiles of an isometric town on one grid, and take them into Godot, Unity or Tiled as a tileset that lines up on import.

What you'll make

A set of isometric tiles on one 2:1 grid, 256 pixels wide per cell: flat ground tiles (grass, road) and buildings with footprints of one or more tiles, each a PNG on a transparent background. The set downloads as one zip laid out for your engine: a Godot 4 TileSet, a Unity atlas with its sprite slicing, a Tiled tileset with an example map, or an atlas with a TexturePacker JSON description.

The same recipe makes a hex map: choose Hex instead of Isometric in the first stage. Hex tiles cover one cell each.

Before you start

  • The grid your game uses: isometric 2:1 or true isometric, or hex pointy top or flat top, and the width of one cell in pixels. If the game already has a tile map, match it.
  • A style line that every tile repeats word for word, such as "cozy hand-painted fantasy village style", so the set reads as one place.
  • Each tile is one run. See Creative Units for how runs are charged.

Set the grid

Every tile of the set shares the grid you set here. Create isometric and hex game tiles covers each setting.

  1. In a session, open Create tile from the side panel (under See all tools if it is not listed). It starts on Isometric with 2:1 dimetric.

  2. Set Tile to the cell width your game uses. The line under it confirms the tile size, here 256 × 128 px per tile.

Make the ground

Flat tiles first: they set the palette and the light that the buildings will sit in. Leave Height at Ground.

  1. Describe a grass tile with the style line and click Create tile.

  2. Replace the description with a road, keeping the style line, and run it again. Make every other ground tile the set needs (water, dirt, a road corner) the same way.

Add the buildings

  1. Give the building a footprint in tiles with Width and Depth, and a Height. A two-by-two shop at 1.5 sits well beside a one-tile tower at 2.5.

  2. Describe the building with the style line and click Create tile.

  3. Set the next building's footprint and height, and make it the same way.

Each tile lands cut out and standing on the same grid, so they line up side by side on the board as they will in the game.

For a building the player sees from more than one side, set Facing to 90°, 180° or 270° and add its first view under Style reference. The tileset names the facings after the building.

Hand it off

  1. Switch the session to Gallery and select every tile of the set.

  2. Right-click a selected tile and choose Download as....

  3. Under Tileset, choose your engine. The line under it names the grid the tiles share.

  4. Click Download All. The zip holds the tiles, the engine's files and a README with the import steps and the grid settings the map needs.

Godot 4

The zip holds one atlas and a TileSet resource (.tres) that describes it. Copy the folder into your project and assign the .tres as a TileMapLayer's tile set. Turn on Y Sort on the layer so taller tiles draw in front of the ones behind them.

Unity

The zip holds one atlas and its .meta file, which slices the atlas into one sprite per tile, each pivoted on the centre of its cell. Copy both into your Assets folder together so Unity keeps the slicing. Set the Grid's Cell Layout and Cell Size to the values in the README, then drag the sprites into a Tile Palette. For buildings taller than a cell, set the Tilemap Renderer's Mode to Individual and sort by the Y axis.

Tiled

The zip holds a .tsx tileset of one image per tile and an example .tmx map that places each tile once. Open the map to check the set, then add the .tsx to your own maps, keeping the tiles folder beside it. Your map's orientation and tile size must match the grid in the README.

Atlas + JSON

One atlas with a TexturePacker JSON description, which PixiJS, Phaser and Cocos load directly.

Scale it up

  • Hold the look across hundreds of tiles. Train a reference set on the approved tiles and use it for every new one, or add an approved tile under Style reference. See Reference sets.
  • Batch the list. Build a workflow that takes a list of tiles and the style line and makes one tile per line, so a new district is one run. See Build prompts from a template in a workflow and Build and publish a workflow.
  • Review before hand-off. Look at the set side by side on the board before export, and keep the approved tiles together in a project so the team exports the right versions. See Organize work into projects.

If something goes wrong

  • "The tile came back off its grid." The model drew the subject off its footprint twice. Run it again, or pick another model from the model menu at the top of the tool.
  • The Tileset choice is greyed out. One of the selected tiles is on another grid (a different shape or tile size) or was not made with Create tile. The reason shows under the choice; remake that tile on the set's grid, or leave it out.
  • Tiles do not line up in the engine. The map's grid differs from the set's. Set the map's tile shape and size to the ones in the zip's README.
  • The set does not look like one town. The style line changed between runs, or the light side did. Reuse the line word for word, keep Light left or Light right the same, and add a style reference.

Related