2D Skeleton
The add-on includes a full set of tools for exporting your Blender armatures as 2D skeletal animations or rendered sprite sheets. These features are designed for 2D game development workflows where you want to author your characters and animations in Blender’s 3D environment but export them for use in a 2D game engine.
There are two main approaches:
- Skeletal export (Pachario 2D) — Exports the bone hierarchy, mesh regions, and animation data so your 2D engine can perform skeletal animation at runtime.
- Sprite sheet export — Renders each animation frame and composites them into a sprite sheet image for traditional frame-based animation.
Both approaches are configured through the Object panel under the Playable tab when an armature is selected. Select the desired format from the Format dropdown to reveal the relevant settings.
2D skeletal export
When a Pachario 2D format is selected, a 2D Skeleton sub-panel appears with settings for your skeletal export.
Atlas image
The atlas image is the sprite texture that your 2D skeleton references. You can assign any image loaded in Blender using the atlas image picker in the 2D Skeleton panel. This image will be either exported alongside the JSON file (for the .json format) or embedded directly into the binary (for the .pchr format).
Mesh atlas regions
When you select a child mesh object that is parented to a 2D armature, a 2D Mesh sub-panel appears. Here you can define the Atlas Region for each mesh — the X, Y, width, and height (in pixels) that corresponds to this mesh’s sprite within the atlas image.
This allows you to map different parts of your character (head, torso, arms, etc.) to different regions of a single atlas texture.
Per-bone settings
When in pose mode with a bone selected, a 2D Bone sub-panel appears with the following options:
- Visible — Controls whether this bone’s associated meshes are visible in the 2D export. This property can be keyframed, allowing you to show and hide parts of your character during animations (useful for things like weapon swaps or expression changes).
- Length Override — Overrides the bone’s length in the exported data. Set to
0to use the bone’s actual length.
Sprite sheet export
When a sprite sheet format is selected, a Sprite Sheet sub-panel appears with rendering and layout settings.
Camera
You can assign a specific camera to use for sprite sheet rendering. If no camera is set, the scene’s active camera will be used. Using a dedicated camera is recommended so you can frame your character precisely without affecting other parts of your scene.
Frame size
The frame size for each cell in the sprite sheet is determined by your scene’s render resolution (Output Properties > Format > Resolution). Each animation frame will be rendered at this resolution.
Sheet layout
The layout of the sprite sheet can be configured in two modes:
- Grid (Rows x Cols) — Specify the number of rows and columns. The total sheet size is calculated automatically based on the frame size.
- Total Size — Specify the total sheet dimensions in pixels. The number of frames that fit is calculated automatically.
The panel shows you how many frames the sheet can hold and how many frames your exportable animations require. A warning is displayed if your animations have more frames than the sheet can fit, or if the sheet dimensions exceed the maximum of 16,384 pixels.
Render setup
- Transparent Background — Forces a transparent background during rendering, regardless of your scene’s world settings. Enabled by default.
- Match Atlas Color Space — Matches the render color management to the atlas image’s color space (sRGB or Linear). Useful for ensuring consistent colors between your atlas and sprite sheet.
- Convert to Emission — A utility operator that converts all materials on child meshes to use an Emission shader. This removes lighting dependence so your sprites render with flat, consistent colors regardless of scene lighting.
Supported export formats
For a complete list of all supported 2D and sprite sheet export formats, see the Exporting documentation.