What's New in PixiEditor 2.1 | PixiEditor Blog

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All Articles What's New in PixiEditor 2.1<br>Anna Kocaj April 30, 2026<br>launchpixieditor2.1

April 30, 2026

PixiEditor 2.1 has been in development for 9 months, and we’re really excited to finally get it into your hands. This release is centered around one big idea: giving you total control over your brushes. Let’s get into it.

The full list of changes is available on our forum.

Node-based Brush Engine

Turns out, if you use nodes to build the whole brush system, it quickly grows beyond any expectations.

There are 13 built-in brushes (more coming with each update), that you can test and use as a template for creating your own.

How advanced are the brushes?

Fully dynamic brushes, responding to other layers, pen data, time and more

Custom blending capabilities with SKSL shading language

Customizable brush settings exposed directly in Pen Tool settings

Full control over every aspect of the brush, from spacing to rotation and scattering. Access to pointer data, canvas data, editor data and more.

Shader support for the most advanced brushes

Create custom tools and save them directly to your toolsets.

Here is a color pencil brush I made using the shader node:

Precise paint engine

PixiEditor now uses a precise paint engine. Previously all brush stamps were rounded to pixels, starting from version 2.1, you can paint with sub-pixel precision. Snapped pixels are still an option per brush.

Stabilizers

Each brush has time-based and distance-based stabilizers that can be set to any value.

Time based : Stabilization is calculated based on time passed between previous position and new position.

Distance based : You need to move X pixels before brush follows your pointer. It’s like dragging something with a rope, you need to move far enough for the rope to become tight, before it draggs the thing on the other side.

Customizable Toolsets and Brush Tools

You can now create your own toolsets and tools based on Brushes. Simply create a Brush that does what you want your tool to do, then create a config file to define your tool and toolset. You can also overwrite built-in toolsets’ settings and icons.

A great example of what this makes possible is the brand new Gradient tool built entirely in the Node Graph. It’s literally just a single .pixi file and a metadata file for icons, shortcuts, and texts.

It also makes use of the new array inputs. You can download the .pixi file from the source code and check it out yourself. You can make something just like it too!

Brush Engine docs

If you want to learn more, check out the docs.

Extension Browser

It is time to test out the extensions system! Below you can find extensions currently available in the browser, along with a short description of what each one brings to the table and how it can help you in your workflow.

Extensions are not available on Steam.

Advanced Pixel Art

Advanced Pixel Art is a set of specialized tools for pixel art. Automatically remove jaggies, easily<br>create dithered gradients (Linear, Radial, Conical) and draw dithered patterns.

Dithering Tool

Draw perfect 4x4 bayer dithering patterns easily. Choose a variety of patterns with density setting and optional background.

Dithered Gradient

It’s not just a simple dithered linear gradient tool. It features dedicated two-color dithered linear gradient mode and custom gradient option, which includes Linear, Radial and Conical gradients with arbitrary amount of colors and stops. All of them configurable with Steps option, which controls the final palette.

Jaggies Remover

Now featuring a tool, that feels like magic. It automatically cleans up all jaggied edges with one mouse stroke. Up until this point, you had to either remeber to always use pixel-perfect mode when drawing or do a tedious work of cleaning everything manually.

Jaggies remover is equipped with two modes:

Clean up all - By default it considers all pixels of all colors. Useful for single pixel strokes.

Clean up by color - Holding ctrl only affects pixels of specified color. Ideal if you already have filled shapes and want to clean up the outline.

Basic Texturing

Basic Texturing Bundle is a set of workspaces for creating cube and tile textures inside PixiEditor. A great starting point for game-ready assets.

3D Cube

Perfect for creating texture packs for voxel games, with an animated 360° preview so you can inspect every face in real time.

Tiled Texturing

Design seamless, repeating textures and preview how they tile across an infinite canvas.

Normal Map Generator

Normal Map Generator is a dedicated workspace for creating and previewing normal maps directly inside PixiEditor. Import your textures, tweak the parameters, and see the shaded result in real time. There’s no need to leave the editor!

See your normal map applied instantly with a real-time shaded preview and a draggable light source. No need to export to a game engine just...