Unity AI Sprite Generator: create 2D sprites, icons, and animation-ready spritesheets from a prompt
Bridge the gap between concept and scene with Unity AI’s Sprite Generator, designed to help you generate, edit, and animate custom 2D assets without interrupting your creative flow.
The Unity AI Sprite Generator is a generative AI tool built into the Unity Editor as part of the Unity AI open beta. It uses machine learning models to produce 2D sprites from text-based prompts and reference images – ready to apply to a scene, assign to a UI element, or animate – without leaving the Editor.
The tool is designed for the prototyping stage of development. Generated sprites are placeholder assets that give teams something visual to work with while production-quality artwork is being created. They are intended to be replaced with human-made final assets before a project ships. The Sprite Generator accelerates iteration; it is not a substitute for the artists’ work.
This guide covers the full Sprite Generator workflow: opening the window, choosing a model, writing prompts, using reference images, modifying results with the post-processing tabs, generating animation-ready spritesheets, managing the Generations panel, and finding generated assets in your project.
What is the Sprite Generator?
The Sprite Generator creates 2D sprites using machine learning models. A sprite is a 2D graphic object – such as a character, icon, tree, or UI element – used in a game or application. With the Sprite Generator, you can:
- Generate sprites from text-based prompts using a wide range of pretrained models
- Apply reference images to guide the style, composition, depth, or line art of the result
- Adjust resolution and visual properties to suit your project
- Post-process results with background removal, upscaling, pixelation, recoloring, and inpainting
- Generate animation-ready spritesheets directly from a generated image
All generated assets are saved in the /GeneratedAssets folder at the root of your project and remain there until you manually remove them.
Opening the Sprite Generator
There are two ways to open the Sprite Generator window:
From the Project window
Right-click an empty area in the Project window.
Select Create > 2D > Generate Sprite.
The Sprite Generator window opens alongside the new sprite asset. Rename the asset to suit your project.
From the Object Picker
The Object Picker offers a contextual shortcut for generating and immediately assigning a sprite to a field in the Inspector window. To use it:
In the Inspector window, select the Object Picker (⊙) icon next to a relevant field – for example, a sprite reference on a UI Image component.
Select Generate New in the top-right corner of the picker window.
The Sprite Generator opens. Once you generate and select a result, the new asset is automatically assigned.
The Generate window – controls and options
The Generate window is the main interface for defining the sprite you want to produce. The following options are available:
Model selection
The Sprite Generator offers various third-party AI models. Simply select Change to open the Select Model window and pick a model that fits your desired style.
Prompt
Enter a text description of the sprite you want to create. Be specific about the subject, visual style, and any important details. For example: “a glowing magic potion bottle, top-down view, cartoon style.”
Negative prompt
The Negative Prompt field lets you describe elements you want to exclude from the result. For example, entering “no text or signs” or “background clutter” steers the generation away from those elements. Using the negative prompt alongside the main prompt gives you finer control over what appears in each generation.
Images
The Images slider sets the number of sprite variations to generate in a single run. Generating multiple results at once lets you compare options before deciding which to promote to an asset.
Dimensions
The Dimensions dropdown sets the output resolution of the generated sprite. Choose the size that suits your intended use – for example, 512 × 512 for a small icon or 1024 × 1024 for a larger character image. Resolution can also be increased later using the Upscale tab.
Custom seed
Enabling Custom Seed and entering a number locks the generation to a fixed starting point. This is useful when iterating on the same subject with small prompt changes, as it produces more consistent results across runs.
Add More Controls to Prompt
Selecting Add More Controls to Prompt opens a panel for attaching reference image operators. These guide the generation based on existing visuals. See the “Generating from a reference image” section below for more details.
Generating from a reference image
The Sprite Generator supports six reference image operator types that shape how the generated sprite relates to a supplied image. To add a reference:
1. In the Generate window, select Add More Controls to Prompt.
2. In the Select which operator to Add window, choose from the following types:
- Image reference – Uses the reference as a source image to modify. This gives the generation a direct visual starting point.
- Style Reference – Conditions the generated sprite to follow the artistic style of the reference image – its color palette, rendering approach, and general aesthetic – without copying its content directly.
- Composition Reference – Influences the spatial arrangement of elements in the output. Use this when the layout or framing of the reference matters, such as a specific pose or visual hierarchy.
- Depth Reference – Adds depth information based on the reference. This is useful for ensuring a generated sprite has a convincing sense of near and far elements.
- Line Art Reference – Conditions the output to follow the line art style of the reference. Useful for maintaining consistency with hand-drawn or vector-style artwork already in the project.
- Feature Reference – Matches specific visual details from the reference – such as color patterns or distinctive shapes – to the generated sprite.
3. Select a reference image by browsing the Select Texture 2D window (Assets tab).
4. Use the Strength slider to set how much the reference image influences the result relative to the text prompt.
5. Select Generate.
Post-processing tabs
After generating a sprite, the Generate window provides five post-processing tabs for refining the result. Each tab serves a distinct purpose.
Remove BG
The Remove BG tab strips the background from the generated sprite, leaving the subject on a transparent alpha channel. This is an important step before using a sprite in UI, as a scene element, or as the first frame in a spritesheet animation.
To use Remove BG:
1. Select the Remove BG tab.
2. Review the Base Image.
3. Select Remove BG.
Upscale
The Upscale tab increases the resolution of the sprite without losing detail. After upscaling, a resolution badge – for example, 2K – appears in the top-left corner of the sprite thumbnail in the Generations panel.
To use Upscale:
1. Select the Upscale tab.
2. Select Change to choose an upscale model.
3. Select Upscale.
Pixelate
The Pixelate tab converts the sprite into a pixel art style. Settings include:
- Size – defines the pixel size
- Keep Image Size – retains the original sprite dimensions
- Sampling Size – sets the number of neighboring pixels to sample
- Pixelate Mode – selects how pixelation is applied, with options including Centroid, Contrast, Bicubic, Nearest, and Center
- Outline Thickness – adjusts the thickness of the pixel outline
To use Pixelate:
1. Select the Pixelate tab.
2. Adjust the settings to suit the desired pixel art style.
3. Select Pixelate.
Recolor
The Recolor tab lets you supply a custom color palette and apply it to the sprite. Selecting the Paint Brush icon in the Palette Reference field opens the Doodle window, which provides tools including a Paint Brush, Eraser, Paint fill, Color Picker, and Brush Size control. A Show BaseImage toggle lets you preview the original sprite while painting your palette reference.
To use Recolor:
1. Select the Recolor tab.
2. Use the Doodle tools to define a color palette.
3. Select Recolor.
Inpaint
The Inpaint tab lets you refine a specific area of the sprite by painting a mask over it and generating new content for that region only. This is useful for correcting unwanted details or swapping out a specific element without regenerating the entire image.
To use Inpaint:
1. Select the Inpaint tab.
2. Enter a prompt describing what you want to appear in the masked area. Do not leave the Prompt field blank.
3. Select the Paint Brush tool in the Inpaint Mask field to open the Doodle window.
4. Paint a mask over the area you want to modify.
5. Select Generate.
Generating a spritesheet for 2D animation
The Sprite Generator can produce an animation-ready spritesheet directly from a generated image. This turns a single static sprite into a 4 × 4 grid of animation frames (16 frames total), derived from a short turntable-style video.
The workflow has two stages:
Stage 1 – generate and prepare the source image
1. Open the Sprite Generator via AI > Generate New > Sprite.
2. Select the Generate tab, enter a prompt describing your character or object, and select Generate.
3. Open the Remove BG tab and select Remove BG to remove the background from the result. This step is important: background content will otherwise appear in the spritesheet frames.
Stage 2 – generate the spritesheet
1. Select the spritesheet tab.
2. In the Prompt field, specify a motion type – for example, "Turntable."
3. Provide a reference image to act as the first frame of the animation.
4. Select spritesheet.
The Generator produces a five-second animation video and samples evenly-spaced frames from it to create the spritesheet. The results that appear in the Generations panel include both the animation video (saved as an .mp4 file in the /GeneratedAssets folder) and the corresponding spritesheet in the Inspector window.
To use the spritesheet in your project, select it in the Project window and drag it into the scene. When prompted, create and save an animation clip (.anim file).
The Generations panel
Every sprite produced during a session appears in the Generations panel. Hovering over a thumbnail shows the model used and the prompt settings for that result. Right-clicking a thumbnail opens a context menu with the following options:
- Select – highlights the sprite in the Project window
- Promote to current asset – replaces the current sprite asset with the selected generation
- Promote to new asset – creates a new, independent asset from the selected generation, leaving the original unchanged
- Reveal in Finder – opens the file location on disk
- Show Generation Data – displays the model, prompt, and reference image settings used; from this window, Use All copies every setting back to the Generate window, Use copies only selected settings, and Copy immediately generates a new sprite using those settings
Finding generated assets – the Unity AI label
When you generate a sprite and promote a generation to an asset, the asset is automatically tagged with the Unity AI label. This label lets you identify, search for, and organize all assets produced with Generators across your project. This is useful for when you want to replace your prototyping assets later.
To find all assets tagged with this label, do one of the following:
- Enter Unity AI in Unity's Search window
- Right-click any generated asset and select Search Generated Assets
The Unity AI label is not applied when the asset is first created – only when a generation is assigned to it.
Using Sprite Generator with AI Assistant
The Sprite Generator can also be invoked from within the AI Assistant window. In Agent mode, the Assistant understands your full project context – including scene hierarchy, active GameObjects, existing assets, installed packages, and more – and can use that context to initiate sprite generation workflows based on a natural-language prompt.
For example, prompting the Assistant with “Generate a pixel art enemy icon for the UI” will open the appropriate workflow, suggest relevant models based on your project's art style, and guide the generation process from within the same conversation interface.
More on Unity AI
If you’re interested in reading more about what’s available in the Unity AI Open Beta, we invite you to read other articles in this ongoing series:
Try Unity AI today
Unity AI open beta is available now for all Unity 6 developers. Sign up for a free trial, explore the AI Assistant, connect your preferred tools via the AI Gateway, and start experimenting with what your development workflow looks like with a project-aware AI agent built in.
Sign up and learn more about plans, pricing, and data privacy at unity.com/features/ai
Full documentation is available in the Unity AI docs linked from the Editor or at docs.unity3d.com.
Unity AI Assistant is currently in open beta. As such, features, behavior, and availability described in this post are under active development and may change, be limited, or be discontinued without notice.