Free Transform

Overview

A general affine transform that combines fractional or negative scale, arbitrary rotation, skew, and translation in one resampling pass. It consolidates transformations otherwise handled separately by transform, pixel_rotate, and content_resize.

Usage tips

• Chaining raster transforms loses quality at every step. Combine rotation, scale, and skew in this one node whenever possible.
• Auto is the normal sampling choice: axis-aligned transforms use pixel-exact Nearest, while arbitrary rotation or skew uses RotSprite.
• Canvas preserves the original size by default. Select Expand if rotation or enlargement clips the result.
• For path-based assets, prefer path_transform before rasterization. It offers the same affine operations, including skew, without raster quality loss.

Common mistakes

• Pixel thickness varies with fractional scale: this is expected with nearest-neighbor scaling. RotSprite reduces the problem, but integer scale with pixel_scale gives the most consistent pixel-art result.
• Skew clips the edges: change Canvas from Keep Size to Expand.
• Only rotation is needed: pixel_rotate can produce the same result and defaults to Expand. Either node is valid.

Related nodes

• path_transform — lossless path-stage equivalent, including skew
• transform — lightweight integer-scale and 90° rotation transform
• pixel_rotate — rotation-only transform and the source of RotSprite sampling
• quad_transform — trapezoid and corner-pin projection