Kagero 陽炎

Pixel art and sprite animation, from the first pixel to a game-ready sprite sheet.

Download · Documentation · What's new · Report a bug

Kagero ("heat haze") is a small, fast desktop editor for pixel art and frame-by-frame animation by Onibi Lab. Draw on a pixel-exact canvas, animate with a timeline and onion skin, and export PNGs, GIFs, WebPs and sprite sheets for your game engine. It runs offline and needs no account.

Features

Draw	Pencil, eraser, fill with tolerance, line, rectangle, ellipse, polygon · square, round and custom brushes · symmetry · dithering · a pixel-exact canvas at any zoom and display scale
Select	Rectangle, lasso and magic wand · add, subtract, intersect, invert · move, copy, flip and rotate the exact shape
Layers	Opacity, lock, alpha lock, duplicate, merge down · canvas size and crop for all layers and frames
Color	Palettes with GIMP .gpl and HEX files · HEX/RGBA entry · convert an image to a palette
Animate	Frames with their own timing · live timeline thumbnails · real-time preview · onion skin · frame tags to loop and export parts
Export	PNG, JPEG, WebP · animated GIF and WebP · sprite sheets (grid or packed) with JSON metadata · pixel-sharp scaling, automatically enlarged for small sprites
Comfort	Autosave with crash recovery · undo for everything · custom shortcuts · themes · touchpad pan and pinch zoom
Extend	Plugins written in Lua, running in a sandbox

Everything works offline. Updates (signed and verified) and Discord Rich Presence are optional.

Install

1. Download kagero-<version>-setup.exe from the latest release and run it. It installs for your user account, with no administrator rights, and adds a Start menu shortcut.
2. Start Kagero → Create New → pick a size → draw.

Prefer a portable copy? Extract kagero-<version>-windows-x64.zip to any folder you own. Already have Kagero? Settings → Updates → Check for Updates.

Kagero needs Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and an OpenGL 2.0 graphics driver. Windows SmartScreen may warn on first start because the program isn't signed with a paid certificate; the release files are signed with minisign instead. → Install & update

Documentation

kagero.gitbook.io/kagero-docs, built from the docs/ folder:

• Start: Install & update · Quick start · The workspace
• Use: Tools · Selection · Colors · Layers · Animation · Export
• Reference: Shortcuts · Settings · Themes · Plugins · FAQ

Build from source

Requires Rust 1.85 or newer with the MSVC toolchain on Windows.

cargo run --release      # build and start Kagero
cargo test               # all tests, no window or network needed

The code, its layers and the file formats are described in the developer documentation; Contributing covers checks, benchmarks and releasing.

About

Kagero is developed by Onibi Lab with help from AI assistants, as explained in How Kagero is made. Its code, icons and the Kagero Pixel font are released under the MIT License; third-party components are listed in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md. Kagero is not affiliated with Aseprite, Igara Studio or Discord.