Sprite FX

25 drop-in 2D sprite shaders for Unity, built for pixel art. Put any of them on a SpriteRenderer with one line of C#, or as a material from the inspector.

• The sprite shaders, SpriteFX as C# source, and a demo scene with every effect on a pixel-art sprite. Unity 6.3+, any render pipeline.
• Unity 6.3 or later, in any render pipeline: Built-in, URP (2D or Universal Renderer) or HDRP.
• A Documentation.txt in the package's folder says what is where and how to use it.
• Try the demo scene in your browser: https://pikoulas.com/demos/sprite-fx/

25 drop-in 2D sprite shaders for Unity, built for pixel art. Put any of them on a SpriteRenderer with one line of C#, or as a material from the inspector.

SpriteFX.Flash(player); // hit flash, own material back after
yield return SpriteFX.DissolveOut(enemy).Wait(); // then Destroy(enemy.gameObject)
SpriteFX.Apply(chest, "glow_outline").Set("glow_color", Color.yellow);

What's inside

• flash — hit flash to any colour
• outline — pixel-perfect, outside or inside, 1–16 px
• glow outline — soft, pulsing, HDR-ready
• dissolve — noise or directional, glowing edge
• burn — charred band and flickering embers
• palette swap — up to 8 colours, enemy variants
• silhouette — flat or shaded tint
• pixelate — whole-pixel steps
• wind sway — grass and trees, out of phase
• shine — sweeping highlight for pickups
• hologram — scanlines, flicker, glitches
• freeze — icy recolour, frost rim, glints
• glitch — row jumps and RGB split
• hue shift — static or rainbow cycling
• stone — petrify, desaturate, sepia
• wave — underwater, heat, dream
• blink — invincibility frames
• pulse tint — poison, heal, charge-up
• jelly — squash and stretch from the base
• gradient map — recolour through any gradient
• chromatic — split channels, optional wobble
• cloak — refracts what is behind it
• rim light — directional inner edge light
• invert — hit-stop negative frames
• dither fade — pixel-art fade, no translucency
• Every setting is a slider in the material's inspector, with sensible defaults.
• Noise snaps to texture pixels, so dissolves and burns stay crisp on pixel art.
• SpriteFX helper: Flash, Blink, DissolveOut/In, BurnOut, DitherOut/In, or animate any setting of any effect with Animate(...). Effects give your own material back when done.
• Outline and glow can grow the sprite's quad, so unpadded sprites still get a full outline.
• The SpriteRenderer's colour and flip carry through every effect.
• Demo scene with every effect running; click a sprite to hit it.

Compatibility

• Unity 6.3 or later, in any render pipeline: Built-in, URP (2D or Universal Renderer) and HDRP.
• Either input handler for the demo: the Input Manager or the Input System.

The shaders, the package's C# scripts and the Python code that draws the demo's sprites pixel by pixel were written with the help of AI (Anthropic's Claude); no generative image model.