Changelog

The version shown in the bottom-left of the editor and the pack browser matches the newest release below - click it to jump here.

v1.1.1 - Dither fill fix

2026-07-17

Fixes

The Fill tool no longer freezes when used with a dither pattern, Checker 75% especially.

v1.1.0 - Move work between assets

2026-07-16

You can now copy artwork out of one asset and paste it into another - a selection, or a whole layer with all of its animation. This release also fixes a group of bugs that could lose animation frames.

Copy between assets

Paste selections into other assets. Select something, press Cmd/Ctrl + C, open a different asset - even in another pack - and press Cmd/Ctrl + V. The two assets need the same canvas size; if they don’t match, Hexcalibur tells you.
Copy layer and Paste layer, in the layer’s right-click menu and the top-bar Layer menu. This carries the whole layer: every animation frame, plus its name, opacity, and blend mode. Paste it into any same-size asset in any pack. (Duplicate layer still covers copies within one asset.)
Copied selections and layers stay on the clipboard until you close or reload the tab.

Selections and transforms

Start a selection outside the canvas. With the marquee or lasso, click the empty space around the canvas and sweep across - the selection enters at the nearest edge, so grabbing a corner or the whole canvas doesn’t require landing on the exact pixel.
Drags no longer stop at the canvas edge. A selection dragged past the border pins to it, and moving or scaling artwork can continue beyond the canvas - whatever is still outside when you confirm is cropped.
Resizing stays open until you confirm. Release the mouse mid-transform and the box and handles stay put - grab another handle, scale back down, or drag inside the box to move it, even from beyond the canvas edge. Every resize samples your original pixels, so reshaping repeatedly doesn’t degrade the art. Press Enter or click outside to apply, Esc to cancel.
Enter confirms a selection. With a selection active, Enter deselects - same as clicking outside it. The numpad’s Enter key now works everywhere the main one does.

Layers

A layer with artwork on other frames but nothing on the current one now shows a small film icon naming the frames the art is on, so an animated layer no longer looks like an empty one.

Fixes

Deleting a frame no longer erases the artwork on frames that were duplicated from it.
Adding, deleting, and reordering frames can now be undone.
Duplicating an animated layer or an animated asset keeps every frame instead of only the one you’re viewing.
Undo now brings back every frame of an animated asset after a canvas resize, an asset delete, or a mirror-mode change - not just the first one.
Turning off mirror mode on an animated block texture no longer flattens the animation on its faces.

v1.0.0 - Initial release

2026-06-07

Hexcalibur’s first release - a browser-based pixel-art editor built for block and tile textures, sprites, and UI art, with a pack-level workflow and a live 3D preview.

Drawing tools

Brush, eraser, line, rectangle, circle, polygon, and star, plus fill, eyedropper, color replace, magic wand, and a text tool with bundled pixel fonts and your own font uploads.
Circle or square brush footprints, adjustable sizes, and a pixel-perfect mode for clean single-pixel lines.
Dithering on every shape-drawing tool, with 10 tileable patterns and an optional secondary color.

Canvas

Custom canvas sizes from 8 to 512 px per axis, including non-square shapes; resize any asset later with a 9-cell anchor picker.
Toggleable pixel grid and 2:1 isometric guidelines, with configurable colors and transparency.

Color, layers, and animation

A full layers panel, a color picker with HEX / RGB / HSL / HSV inputs, and reusable palettes.
Palette Manager for building and organizing palettes, with color-theory palette generation and cross-device sync on Pro.
An animation timeline with frames, tags, and onion skinning.

3D preview

See your texture wrapped on a live 3D shape as you paint, with multiple shape modes, a lighting toggle, and a dockable or floating panel.
Optional per-face labels (T/B/N/S/E/W) to tell faces apart while the cube orbits, and a configurable backdrop - studio, light, neutral, or dark presets, or any custom color - so you can judge a texture against different surroundings without tinting the faces.
An active-face indicator while mirror mode is off: an “Editing” chip above the canvas names the face you’re painting (click it to switch faces or turn mirror back on), and the 3D preview marks that face’s letter in teal.

Tiles and tilemaps

Tilemap assets - build maps from your pack’s tiles on a cell grid, up to 1024 px per side. Cells reference the tile they show, so editing a tile updates every map that uses it, live; double-click a cell to open its tile. Maps mix tile layers with normal paint layers (strokes clip to the cell they start in, with a toggle), and right-click turns painted cells into reusable tiles. Maps export as Tiled .tmx map files.
Tile menu and Tile Shelf - a dedicated Tile menu in the top bar holds the workflow’s entry points, and the Tile Shelf docks the pack’s tile library under the canvas - terrains, tilesets, single tiles, and hidden tiles, each in its own tab with a type icon so the kind reads at a glance. Any tab pops out into a floating, resizable window.
Tile stamp - every asset in the pack doubles as a stamp; pick one and paint it onto a grid with the Tile Stamp tool (S), with replace and overlay blend modes and optional tile numbers on the canvas and in the shelf. On a map’s tile layer, Stack mode sends overlapping stamps to a tile layer above (created automatically), so props overlap cleanly.
Tilesets - bring in a tileset image you already own and the whole sheet imports as one tileset, drawn as a continuous atlas in the shelf, or draw your own from scratch with Draw a Blank Tileset (a blank grid you fill cell by cell, free). Drag across an atlas to stamp whole multi-tile blocks - a tree, a house - in one click. A Stamp / Edit toggle in each tileset’s header decides whether a click arms the tile to paint with or opens it for drawing, with the change applying everywhere the tile is used.
Terrain generation (Pro) - draw a base tile and an edge tile and Hexcalibur composes a complete terrain - every edge, corner, and inner corner, as a terrain (47-tile) or path (16-tile) set, with regenerate-from-source built in. Painting with a terrain is free: Autotile picks the edge and corner pieces as you drag, with a toggle in the tool options bar for exact placement. New to autotiling? An empty Tile Shelf offers Try an example terrain that seeds a working one and drops you straight into painting.
Draw a terrain (Pro) - the hand-drawn counterpart to generation: draw every piece yourself for full control over how the ground meets the world. Solid terrains carve from 13 key pieces (fill, edges, outer and inner corners) that assemble into the full set on Rebuild; path terrains shape their connection pieces. Both seed from a fill so you start carving instead of facing blank cells, with a live preview as you draw, and paint with Autotile exactly like a generated terrain.
Replace tiles - right-click a tile in the Tile Shelf (or a map cell) to replace or clear every instance of it on the layer, swap whole generated terrain sets for one another across the map, or flip the Fill tool’s Contiguous toggle off to replace every matching cell with one click.
Tiled mode - view the canvas as a live 3x3 repetition of itself while you paint, with wrap-around strokes, for hand-tuning seamless textures.
Make Seamless (Pro) - one click converts a texture into a seamlessly tiling version, with no blur and no new colors.
Tiles tour - a guided walkthrough of the whole tile workflow, from the Help menu or the ? in the Tile Shelf’s header.

Packs, import, and export

Organize work into packs of assets; import images as assets, layers, or animation frames, slice sprite sheets, and attach reference images.
Export and import whole packs as .hexc files - a free, lossless way to back up, share, and move your work between computers. Import from the editor’s File menu or the pack browser’s Import Pack button.
Select multiple packs in the pack browser - check the box on a pack’s tile, then click the others - to delete several at once.
Engine-aware export for Minecraft and popular indie engines, plus PNG, GIF, APNG, and sprite-sheet output.

Workspace

Customizable panels (show / hide, resize, float), an Edit > Preferences modal for editor and per-tool defaults, keyboard shortcuts throughout, and guided tours.

Account

Sign in with email, Google, or a magic link. Free to start; a Pro plan unlocks the power features, with your work synced to your account.