Slices

The Slice Tool

Activate the Slice tool with Shift+K or from the toolbar. While the tool is active:

• Drag to create — Click and drag on the canvas to define a new rectangular slice. Slices are auto-named "Slice 1", "Slice 2", etc.
• Click body to select — Click inside an existing slice to select it. Eight resize handles appear at the corners and edges.
• Drag body to move — Drag inside a selected slice to reposition it. Movement is clamped to the canvas bounds.
• Drag handles to resize — Corner handles resize diagonally; edge handles resize along one axis. Minimum size is 1×1 px.
• Place the pivot — Every selected slice shows its pivot as a crosshair in the slice's own color. Drag the glyph to move it, Alt+drag anywhere on the slice to drop it under the cursor, or click twice on the slice to snap it to that pixel. Each pivot move is its own undo step.

Slices are only drawn while the Slice tool is active or the Slices panel is open, so they stay out of the way the rest of the time. Simple mode hides the Slice tool; switch to Advanced mode from Window → Layouts if you cannot find it.

The Slices Panel

Open the Slices panel with Shift+F9 or from the Window menu. The panel lists all slices and provides the following operations per slice:

• Expand a row — Click a slice in the list to select it and open its fields: Name, position and size (X, Y, W, H), Pivot X and Pivot Y, and a free-form Data field for your own notes.
• 9-slice — Enable 9-slice guides adds the centre rectangle (CX, CY, CW, CH) that keeps corners crisp while edges tile. Preview 9-slice scaling shows what it will look like stretched.
• Color — Each slice has an optional display color (default cyan #4fc3f7) used to distinguish overlapping regions at a glance.
• Duplicate — Creates a copy named after the original with a "Copy" suffix (e.g. "Slice 1 Copy").
• Delete — Removes the slice from every frame (slices are file-level objects, not per-layer).

The panel also hosts the Auto-Slice button, which opens the Split Image dialog pre-configured for slices with auto-detection. See Import & Export for details.

Slice Positions Across Frames

A slice stores its rectangle as a list of keys, and every frame uses the key that governs it: the key sitting on that exact frame if there is one, otherwise the closest earlier key. There is no interpolation between keys.

Slices you create in Novaboard start with a single key, so one rectangle covers the whole animation. Moving or resizing a slice always edits the key that governs the frame you are on, and the change shows up on every frame that key covers.

To make a slice move during the animation, go to the frame where it should change and click Add key on this frame in the Slices panel. The new key copies the rectangle the frame was already showing, so nothing jumps; from there on that frame and the frames after it follow the new key, and dragging or resizing the slice only changes those. Remove this key deletes the key sitting on the current frame, so the frame goes back to inheriting the closest earlier one. The panel always names the key you are editing, such as "Key: frame 0 (held)" on a frame that inherits, and both buttons are separate undo steps. Keys are only ever created or deleted when you ask for it, never as a side effect of an edit. A slice keeps at least one key, so the last one cannot be removed.

Slices imported from an Aseprite file can arrive with several keys already, one for each frame where the region moves or changes size. Novaboard keeps them: the canvas, the exports and the game engine metadata all read the key that governs each frame, and saving back to .aseprite writes every key out again.

Exporting with Slices

Slices reach the export dialog in two ways. Any export can target a single slice: set the Area to Slice and pick it from the list. Or use Split into one export per slice, which turns the export into one entry per slice, each cropped to the slice bounds and named after it.

Importing Slices from a Sprite Sheet

Use Image → Split Image… and switch the split mode to Slices. The dialog supports two detection methods:

• Grid mode — Divide the image into equal-sized cells by column/row count or cell dimensions.
• Auto-detect — Find non-transparent rectangular regions automatically.

The dialog is a workbench, not a thumbnail: wheel-zoom on your cursor, drag to pan, and fit or 1:1 buttons to get back. Grid mode takes an offset and a gap as well as the cell size, so sheets with margins and gutters cut correctly. Auto-detected regions are editable: drag one to move it, drag on empty space to add one, right-click to remove one, and resize with the same eight handles the Slice tool uses. When you are splitting into slices you can also set each region's pivot with a double-click or an Alt+drag, and the slice keeps it.

Each detected cell becomes a named slice on the current file. The Slices panel Auto-Slice button opens this same dialog pre-configured for slices + auto-detect.