Super Tilemap Editor¶
This is the user manual for Super Tilemap Editor 1.7.7, a tilemap editor for Unity by Creative Spore. It covers every window and inspector in the tool, the scene view painting controls and the scripting API you are most likely to need.
What it does¶
You build a level in two steps. First you make a tileset: an asset that holds an atlas texture, the tiles sliced from it and the brushes that paint with those tiles. Then you add a tilemap to the scene, point it at the tileset and paint directly in the scene view.
A tilemap does not store its tiles on one big mesh. It splits the map into chunks of 60 by 60 cells, and each chunk is a child object with its own mesh and its own colliders. A chunk is created the first time you paint into its area, and editing a tile rebuilds the chunk that holds it rather than the whole map. How It Works explains the layout in detail.
Beyond plain tiles, the tool gives you:
- Brushes that autotile. A road, carpet or 47-tile brush picks the right tile for each cell from its neighbours, a random brush scatters variations and an animated brush plays a sequence of frames. See Brushes.
- Colliders generated from per-tile collider shapes, as 2D edge or polygon colliders or as a 3D mesh. See Colliders.
- Tilemap groups that stack several tilemaps as layers under one parent. See Tilemap Groups.
- Tile properties for each tile: a collider shape, a prefab to spawn in its place and custom parameters your scripts can read. See Tile Properties.
- Importers for maps made in Tiled and Pyxel Edit.
Requirements¶
- Unity 2022.3.62f2 or later, up to Unity 6.
- The 2D Sprite package (
com.unity.2d.sprite). The tileset code reads sliced sprite sheets through it. The Asset Store package declares it as a dependency, so it is installed along with Super Tilemap Editor. The 2D project templates include it already.
What gets installed¶
The asset comes in two folders under Assets/CreativeSpore/:
| Folder | What is in it |
|---|---|
SuperTilemapEditor |
The tool itself: scripts, the two stencil shaders and changelog.txt. |
SuperTilemapEditor - Extra |
Optional content: this manual as a PDF, the Pyxel Edit importer and the sample tilesets with their demo scenes. |
You can delete SuperTilemapEditor - Extra from a finished project. The tool does not depend on it, apart from the Open PDF Manual button in the welcome window, which is greyed out when the PDF is missing.
The four demo scenes are described in Sample Scenes. The PDF of this manual is at SuperTilemapEditor - Extra/Documentation/SuperTilemapEditor Manual.pdf.
The welcome window¶
The welcome window opens by itself after you import the asset, and again once in every editor session after that, until you clear Show this window on startup at the bottom. You can open it again at any time from SuperTilemapEditor > Welcome.
It has buttons for this manual as a PDF and online, the video tutorials, the Discord server and support email. The version number of the tool you have installed is shown in its bottom right corner.
Where to go next¶
- Getting Started takes you from an atlas texture to a painted map with colliders.
- Sample Scenes lists what each demo scene shows.
- Tilesets covers slicing, the tile palette and tile views.
- Painting covers every paint tool and how the brush behaves.
- Keyboard and Mouse is the full list of shortcuts.
- Scripting shows how to read and write tiles from code.
- Troubleshooting and the FAQ answer the common problems.
- Help & Support: Discord, email and how to report a bug.
Questions go fastest on Discord, where other users can help too.