Meet Layout Manager
The Browser-Based Canvas Built for Game Artists & AI Pipelines
By RUN.team · August 6, 2026
Creating and organizing game assets—especially sprite sheets and layered character gear—often requires bouncing between heavy photo editors, specialized sprite tools, and custom scripts. Then Barker made Layout Manager, a lightweight, open-source canvas application that runs entirely in your web browser. Styled with the intuitive drag-and-drop feel of modern layout tools like Canva, Layout Manager is tailored specifically for indie developers, game artists, and AI creators who need precision, speed, and seamless pipeline integration.
Key Features at a Glance
1. Smart Canvas & Sprite Sheet Layouts
Whether you are building a simple UI layout or organizing complex sprite animations, Layout Manager gives you full control over your canvas.
Precise Alignment: Use grids, snapping, rulers, and hotkey alignments (similar to PureRef) to organize dozens of assets instantly.
Pixel-Art Ready: Toggle between Bicubic and Nearest Neighbor scaling on the fly so pixel art remains crisp.
Non-Destructive Editing: Crop, rotate, add strokes, paint masks, or adjust color settings without permanently modifying your source files.
2. Animation & Flipbook Extraction
Import MP4 videos or GIF animations to extract frames directly into memory or disk. Preview animation loops with the built-in player, select keyframes, and arrange them into production-ready sprite sheets complete with automated batch-renaming.
3. Spatial Metadata & Rig Parenting
One of Layout Manager’s standout features is its ability to handle parent-child element relationships.
Link paper-doll accessories (like hats, weapons, or armor) directly to character bases.
Define Base and Offset positions with custom pixel masks.
Export full layout metadata as structured JSON (page_info), allowing game engines or AI models to understand exact spatial positions and asset relationships without manual trial and error.
4. Private, Local-First AI Workflows
Layout Manager integrates modern AI capabilities directly into your browser workspace without locking you into proprietary platforms:
In-Browser Background Removal: Powered by ONNX Runtime and IS-Net, process background removal locally with zero server lag, total privacy, and no API keys required.
ComfyUI Integration: Connect directly to your local ComfyUI instance to execute custom image-to-image or background-removal nodes right from your canvas.
Multimodal Chat Helpers: Attach canvas elements to local LLMs or GPT APIs to automatically generate prompts or analyze visual layouts.
Getting Started
Layout Manager runs on your own computer, in your browser. You need to do two things once: install Node.js, and download this project.