Pribambase

Pribambase is a small tool that connects Aseprite and Blender, to allow painting with instant viewport feedback and all functionality of external editor at the same time. It also adds a few shortcuts like displaying the UV map in Aseprite or setting up a grid-scaled pixelart reference in the viewport.

Currently, the addon has mostly one-way workflow where you paint in Ase and not much in Blender. Better bidirectional workflow may be added in distant future.

• How Do I... tutorials and advice.
  
• Reference explains each button and setting.
• Community to show off your work or ask for help.
  
• Issues tracker for errors, bugs and feature requests.
• Hashtag #pribambase to browse or share the work you created.

---

Setup

Video version - all thanks to frozenMeatpopsicle

This plugin consists of two parts: for Aseprite and for Blender. Get them from downloads section. Aseprite plugin is the same regardless of the OS.

Prerequisites

Blender recommended version 2.83 or later, preferrably latest. Minimum version is 2.80, but performance and stability are significantly worse, and texture animation will not work. 

Aseprite recommended version 1.2.31 or 1.3-beta8 or later. Minimum version 1.2.30 or 1.3-beta7 (see "known issues"). Trial version doesn't work.

Installing Aseprite plugin

1. Launch Aseprite and drag the file called pribambase-aseprite into the window.
2. Press Install.
3. Restart Aseprite.

After that, a new menu option called Sync should appear in the File menu

Installing Blender plugin

1. In Edit > Preferences > Addons click Install and chose the file called pribambase-blender-{...}.
2. After the addon appears in the list, check the box next to its name to activate it. The app might freeze for several seconds.
3. Save preferences from the "burger" menu.

After that, a new section called Sync will appear in N > Tools tab in viewport, and a new menu called Sprite will appear in the Image/uv editor.

---

Usage

After the plugins are installed, turn each of them on before drawing: in blender press Connect on top of the plugin's panel in the viewport, in Aseprite press File > Sync .  After that you can:

• Open any texture used in blendfile normally in Aseprite, and it will be updated in Blender as you paint. This applies to both textures created normally with blender, and textures set up by the plugin.
• Use Image Editor > Sprite menu to load aseprite files as textures, or create new ones.
• Enable Show UV to show the UV Map in aseprite. It works similar to blender's UV editor.
• Use shortcuts for setting up references, materials, and animations in blender. These do not require an active connection.

---

Known Issues

• Undo/redo in aseprite after sending UVs makes the  reference layer do odd things. Then, UV image appears without a layer in the list - allegedly using Reload All References fixes it (huh?)
• Sometimes sending UV manually ignores the last change in the UV map.
• It's better to disable auto-reloading images by Sprytile or other addons. It does not conflict with syncing per se, but it stops blender from saving file backups.
  
• In older versions of Aseprite plugin fails to notice the change in sprite location until the next edit.
  
• In blender 2.80-2.82 the UV only syncs after exiting edit mode.
• In blender 3.1 image contents do not update due to a bug (T96030 or a similar one). Enable `Addon Preferences > Save After Sync` to use a reload hack, at cost of performance/disk load.
• Color Burn, Hue, Saturation, Color, and Luminousity layer modes look different in Blender than in Ase.