What is TexturePacker?

Andreas Löw

TexturePacker is a software tool for game and app development that is used for creating and managing sprite sheets. A sprite sheet is a single image file that contains multiple smaller graphics or sprites.

Why use TexturePacker?

The use of sprite sheets can greatly improve the performance of games and apps. Instead of loading many images from the file system or a web server, one big image is loaded instead. This can lead to a smoother, more efficient and more performant experience for the end-user.

Compatibility and Features

TexturePacker is compatible with a wide range of game engines (over 30!) and platforms, including Unity, Phaser, PixiJS, Cocos2d-x, LibGDX and more.

The feature set depends on what the game engine supports:

  • Editor for 9-slice images
  • Pivot point editor
  • Detecting identical sprite frames
  • Removing transparency
  • Optimizations to reduce image artifacts
  • Scaling sprites for different platforms
  • Image compression

Sprite sheet packing

TexturePacker can not only pack grid-based sprite sheets where all sprites are the same size, but it can also pack complex sprite sheets with differently-sized sprites.

TexturePacker packs sprite sheets for your game
TexturePacker packs sprite sheets for your game or app

It supports advanced optimizations such as removing obsolete transparency around sprites or rotating sprites for a better fit on the sheet or even turning the sprites into polygon shapes.

Learn more about sprite sheet packing in our tutorial How to create a sprite sheet.

Image Optimizations and Compression

TexturePacker can automatically handle image optimizations and compression to reduce the file size of sprite sheets and improve performance even further. This includes options for image compression and support for various image formats, such as PNG, JPG, and more. PNG images can be reduced to the 8 bit indexed format.

It also supports hardware compression formats such as ETC1, DXT, PVRTC and more.

Animations and Frame Management

TexturePacker automatically detects animation frames and creates animation definitions for supported frameworks. You can also text animations in the animation previewer.

Updates and Modifications

TexturePacker makes it easy to update and modify sprite sheets, allowing developers to quickly make changes to graphics and animations as needed. It detects updated sprite files and automatically re-packs the sprite sheet.