26 high-fidelity 2.5D fantasy-pirate raiders — de-lit, engine-relightable, 8-direction. A multi-species free-port raider crew for the fantasy seas — not tricorne-and-parrot cosplay. Weathered, dangerous, lived-in: a human captain commanding orcs, ogres, a sea-troll, goblins, dwarves, and a deep roster of rarer folk — lizardfolk, sahuagin, gnoll, dragonborn, minotaur, tortle, ratfolk, kenku, half-giant, and grung. 15 species, 7 human / 19 non-human. The HD line's fantasy reimagining of the pirate theme, built at illustration fidelity for games that light their sprites at runtime (HD-2D / 2.5D).

Why de-lit?

These sprites carry form and material; your engine supplies the light. That is the HD-2D contract (Octopath Traveler, Sea of Stars): a placed light casts real shadows, the normal map turns a flat billboard into volume, the mask's ambient-occlusion deepens the folds and its roughness lets a steel cutlass catch a highlight the coat doesn't. The same raider reads correctly on a sunlit deck, at dusk, and in a lantern-lit hold — from one pack.

What's Included

26 crew archetypes across 15 species, each with 8 directional views × 4 map layers at 512×512, foot-anchored (pivot [0.5, 1.0]):

| Variant | Species | Role | Identity cue | |---------|---------|------|--------------| | Captain | human | fleet commander | Sea-coat, bandana, wide buckled belt | | Navigator | human | charts & helm | Bandana, astrolabe, rolled sea-chart | | Sea-Witch | human | sea-magic caster | Sea-green robes, shells, coral staff | | Sawbones | human | ship surgeon | Blood-stained apron, surgical saw | | Swashbuckler | human | duelist | Open shirt, sash, feathered hat, rapier | | Smuggler | human | fence / contraband | Hooded coat, many pockets, sash | | Cabin Kid | human | deckhand | Oversized coat, flat cap, sash | | First Mate | orc | enforcer | Tusks, officer's sea-coat, boarding axe | | Harpooner | orc | ranged hunter | Tusks, bare arms, barbed harpoon, rope | | Bosun | ogre | deck discipline | Huge, harness straps, belaying maul | | Berserker | ogre | boarding bruiser | Bare scarred chest, anchor on a chain | | Breaker | sea-troll | siege brute | Warty grey-green hide, anchor-club | | Marksman | goblin | crossbow sniper | Green skin, brass eyepiece, crossbow | | Bombardier | goblin | sea-bombs | Goggles, lit sea-bomb, explosive satchel | | Quartermaster | dwarf | supplies & coin | Braided beard, ledger, hand-cannon | | Cannoneer | dwarf | deck guns | Braided beard, apron, deck-cannon | | Diver | lizardfolk | pearl-hunter | Scaled crest, tail, nets, barbed spear | | Tide-Cultist | sahuagin | kraken priest | Fins, scales, barnacled robes, idol-staff | | Reaver | gnoll | frenzied boarder | Hyena head, mane, twin axes | | Marine | dragonborn | armored boarder | Scaled, horned, naval armor, pike + shield | | Juggernaut | minotaur | anchor tank | Bull head, horns, ship's anchor | | Cook | tortle | galley & cleaver | Turtle shell, beak, apron, cleaver | | Rigger | ratfolk | topman / ropes | Rat head, whiskers, long tail, rope | | Stormcaller | kenku | storm-magic | Crow head, feathers, lightning rod | | Brig-Keeper | half-giant | jailer | Towering, leather jerkin, keys + chain | | Poisoner | grung | dart & toxin | Bright frog-folk, blowgun, toxin vials |

The four layers

| Layer | What it is | Use it for | |---|---|---| | albedo | de-lit base colour — no baked light, shadow, or AO | the sprite; your engine lights it | | normal | view-space surface normals — OpenGL-style (Y up), blue ≈ toward camera (flip green for DirectX) | real-time directional lighting | | mask | R = ambient occlusion · G = roughness · B = emissive | contact shadows, material sheen, self-glow | | depth | linear camera-distance (white = near) | parallax / tooling (not 2D lighting) |

Every layer is pixel-aligned across the 8 directions; each raider ships a manifest.json (schema_version 2.0.0) with a per-file SHA-256, the pivot, the mask channel map, and per-engine notes.

Install

npm install @sprite-foundry/pirate-raiders-hd

Folder Structure

assets/
  captain/
    albedo/    8 directional PNGs (front, front_left, left, back_left, back, back_right, right, front_right)
    normal/    8 matching view-space normal maps
    mask/      8 matching AO/roughness/emissive masks
    depth/     8 matching depth maps
    manifest.json
  ...25 more

Engine Compatibility

Plain PNG + JSON — load them anywhere, then wire the layers into your lighting pipeline:

• Godot 4 — albedo on a Sprite2D, normal via CanvasTexture.normal_texture, a PointLight2D; sample mask.g for specular, mask.r to modulate ambient.
• Unity URP (2D) — albedo → _BaseMap, normal → _NormalMap, mask → _MaskMap (R=AO, G=roughness).
• Phaser / PixiJS / custom — albedo + normal into the 2D lighting pipeline; mask / depth are tooling-side.

manifest.json carries the per-engine notes in engineNotes. No engine-specific format, no runtime dependency.

The -hd line vs the 48 line

pirate-raiders-48 (retro 48px pixel-art) and pirate-raiders-hd are parallel tiers. The HD tier is a fantasy multi-species reimagining — 26 raiders across 15 species — built at illustration fidelity for 2.5D lighting, rather than a 1:1 HD copy of the 48px crew. Ship the 48px pack for a retro pixel game, ship -hd for a high-fidelity 2.5D fantasy raider crew. Pick the tier your renderer wants.

Specs

• Variants: 26 crew archetypes across 15 species (7 human / 19 non-human)
• Tile size: 512 × 512 px
• Directions: 8
• Layers: albedo + normal + mask (AO/roughness/emissive) + depth
• Total sprites: 832 (26 × 8 × 4)
• Format: transparent PNG + manifest.json (schema 2.0.0)
• Pivot: [0.5, 1.0] (foot-anchored)

How it's made (and why it's commercial-clean)

Each raider starts as a fresh high-fidelity concept in a house-trained painterly style (Qwen-Image, Apache-2.0). The 8 directional views are generated without a 3D mesh — Qwen-Image-Edit-2511 (Apache-2.0) rotates the camera around the character while holding identity, so faces, scales, shells, and tails survive every angle. Each view is then decomposed into its 2.5D layers by single-image estimators: a de-lit albedo + roughness from Marigold-IID (Apache-2.0 code, OpenRAIL weights — commercial-OK), real surface normals from Marigold-Normals, depth from Depth-Anything-V2-Base (Apache-2.0), a clean alpha matte from BiRefNet (MIT), and ambient occlusion derived from the depth — then packed to the contract above. Identity stays in the image model — no InsightFace / InstantID / face-adapter weights (which carry non-commercial licenses) touch this pack. Every component is Apache-2.0 / MIT / commercial-OpenRAIL; the assets are yours to ship.

Security

This package contains only static PNG images and JSON metadata — no executable code, no install hooks, no network access, no telemetry. See SECURITY.md.

License

MIT — use in commercial and non-commercial projects.

Credits

Built by MCP Tool Shop with the Sprite Foundry no-mesh 2.5D pipeline (Qwen-Image + Qwen-Image-Edit + Marigold + Depth-Anything-V2).