game-assets

name

game-assets

description

Create, edit, animate, and prepare production-ready game assets with Meowa, including pixel and HD sprites, multi-view characters, UI sheets, image and frame edits, seamless textures, terrain tilesets, isometric and side-scrolling maps, short video, sound effects, and game music. Use when a task requires choosing the right game-art workflow, planning a pixel or HD asset pipeline, running the bundled Meowa CLI, or validating final media for a game project.

Meowa Game Assets

Create game-ready visual and audio assets. Establish the final asset contract first, choose the smallest suitable capability, and combine modules only when the downstream command accepts the upstream output.

Establish the asset contract

Determine these requirements before selecting a command:

• Runtime asset type: sprite, prop, UI, texture, tileset, map layer, animation, video, sound, or music.
• Art representation: pixel or HD.
• Final dimensions, sprite-cell size, count, aspect ratio, transparency, and file format.
• Deliverable structure: one asset, a variant pack, sprite sheet, directional set, layer set, animation, or reusable atlas.

Treat preset-defined dimensions and output counts as fixed contracts. Do not imply that prompt wording can override them.

Apply game-art fundamentals

Pixel art

• Treat the pixel grid as part of the design, not merely as image resolution.
• Keep animated characters, monsters, and similar frame-based assets at 128×128 or smaller whenever practical. Larger pixel assets raise animation cost and often reduce generation or frame-edit consistency. Reserve larger pixel canvases mainly for maps, character illustrations, portraits, and other assets that do not need frame animation.
• Treat pixel assets generated by Meowa as already perfectly pixelated. Do not run standalone pixelation on them again.
• Use pixel-native generation, editing, cleanup, and animation paths for pixel assets.
• Preview only at integer zoom with nearest-neighbor sampling. Never smooth or shrink pixel art merely for display.
• Inspect transparency and every sprite-sheet cell at native resolution.

HD art

• Treat resolution tiers as canvas and detail choices, not guarantees of one universal pixel dimension unless a preset defines it.
• Preserve smooth contours, material rendering, lighting, silhouette, and transparent-edge quality.
• Choose aspect ratio and composition for the asset's gameplay use rather than for presentation convenience.
• Do not treat ordinary downscaling as pixel-art production. Use pixel conversion only when conversion is explicitly requested, and validate the result as a new pixel asset.
• Inspect actual output dimensions and alpha after generation or editing.

Shared production rules

• Use transparency only when the runtime asset needs it; backgrounds and repeatable terrain materials may intentionally remain opaque.
• Keep style, scale, camera, palette, light direction, and anchor conventions consistent across related assets.
• Treat source images and downloaded references as inputs, never as generated deliverables.
• Prefer a specialized capability over a generic image path.
• Validate the asset at its intended gameplay scale, not only in a large preview.

Follow common pixel and HD workflows

Pixel workflow

1. Characters and props: use preset-driven pixel generation when the final sprite dimensions matter. Select the target resolution first, describe one readable asset, and add a reference image when art direction or identity must match an existing game.
2. Large pixel assets: use large-pixel-gen-run for larger scenes, illustrations, portraits, buildings, and other compositions that do not fit a small sprite preset.
3. Pixel Universal Generation: use pixel-universal-gen-run as the pixel-art counterpart to a general Nano Banana-style image workflow. It uses a large 4:3 canvas and supports a normal composition or a top-down game view. Typical uses include converting HD artwork into a new pixel composition, generating pixel scenes or character illustrations, and designing multi-stage building-upgrade artwork.
4. Animation: animate only after the character or prop design is stable. Prefer assets at 128×128 or smaller; pixel images above 256×256 commonly lose pixel character and motion consistency when animated.

Do not run standalone pixelation after any Meowa pixel-generation command. Pixel outputs are already perfectly pixelated.

HD workflow

1. Characters and props: use an HD preset when the deliverable needs a controlled asset family, count, or composition, and use references for style or identity consistency.
2. Large or general compositions: use a general Nano Banana or Image-2 still-image path for scenes, illustrations, portraits, and unrestricted recomposition. Unlike preset generation, this path prioritizes composition freedom over a fixed sprite-size contract.
3. Animation: finalize the still asset, framing, and available motion space before using sprite animation or short video. Choose sprite animation for game-ready looping motion and video for larger, more complex HD movement.

Understand the modules

Module	Responsibility	Typical role in a production chain
CLI setup and authentication	Install the runner, configure a Meowa account key locally, and verify the first authenticated request	Read for a new installation or missing authentication
Capability routing	Select the correct capability and public command	Read first for every task
Pixel and HD assets	Create base assets and directional characters; perform background removal or pixel conversion	Feed finalized still assets into editing or animation
UI and image editing	Generate UI sheets, extract an aggregate UI sheet, and edit still images or animated frames	Refine an existing visual asset without changing its media role
Maps, tiles, and textures	Create repeatable materials, terrain atlases, isometric or hex tiles, and side-scrolling layers	Build environment assets from materials through map-ready outputs
Animation and video	Create seamless image loops, sprite animation, or short video clips	Consume a stable, finalized still asset
Audio	Create sound effects, coherent sound packs, music direction, and rendered tracks	Add audio after gameplay timing and visual direction are known
Running and outputs	Execute safely, recover interrupted jobs, validate outputs, and hand off final files	Apply to every module

Combine modules deliberately

Use these common chains only when each downstream module accepts the preceding file:

• Pixel character: preset discovery → exact-size pixel generation → still edit or background cleanup → directional views when required → sprite animation.
• Large pixel composition: large-pixel preset discovery → large-pixel-gen-run → still edit when required.
• General pixel composition: pixel-universal-gen-run with a normal or top-down view → still edit when required → animate only when the resulting asset is suitably small.
• HD character or prop: HD generation → still edit → optional background removal → sprite animation or short video.
• Existing animation: animated-frame editing. Do not regenerate it as a new animation unless the user asks for a new motion design.
• Environment: inspect map-reference categories before selecting a type, theme, and layout → seamless texture, terrain tileset, or isometric generation → map-ready validation. Generate side-scrolling layers directly because that command does not accept downloaded map presets.
• UI: UI generation or extraction → still-image refinement. UI extraction currently returns one aggregate sheet, not separate component files.
• Audio-visual asset: finalize timing and action first → create matching effects or music.

Avoid unnecessary chains. Every generative step can change identity, scale, palette, edges, timing, and cost.

Route and execute

1. For a new installation or missing authentication, read meowart_api.md and help the user configure the key locally. Never ask them to paste it into chat.
2. Read capability-routing.md.
3. Read the selected capability module; read multiple modules only for an intentional production chain.
4. Inspect python3 meowart_api.py <command> --help for current product options.
5. Run one primary *-run command with a new explicit --output-dir.
6. Apply a downstream edit or post-process only when required by the asset contract.
7. Open the saved media, inspect final_outputs.json, and validate every promised property before handoff.

Keep the public boundary clean

• Guide users to configure Meowa account authentication locally when needed, but never request the key itself or expose credentials, provider, model, endpoint, sampling, internal-stage, or raw-request controls.
• Never overwrite source assets or return input references, internal templates, masks, metadata, debug artifacts, or intermediate files.
• Return only declared final deliverables.
• Do not claim dimensions, transparency, seamlessness, directional consistency, component separation, or animation quality until the final files have been inspected.