Cannot add animation frames to atlas tile - “Not enough room in the atlas” error | Godot 4.6.1

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Godot Version: 4.6.1 stable

Hi, I’m trying to set up animated tiles using a TileMapLayer with an atlas tileset (a large 1024x1024 packed spritesheet, 16px tile size). When I select a tile in the TileSet editor and try to add animation frames via the Animation tab, the “Add Frame” button does nothing and I get this error repeatedly in the output:

ERROR: editor/scene/2d/tiles/tile_set_atlas_source_editor.cpp:263 - Cannot add frames to the animation, not enough room in the atlas to layout 2 frames.
Add element to property array with prefix animation_frame_.

The tile IS selected (highlighted blue), I’m in Select mode, and the Animation section shows Columns/Speed fields. Setting Columns works, but Add Frame always fails.

After researching I understand this happens because the tileset is a general-purpose packed sheet — the tiles I want to animate don’t have consecutive empty tiles to their right, so Godot can’t lay out the frames.

My questions:

  1. Is there any way to animate tiles from a packed atlas WITHOUT needing consecutive empty space? For example, can I manually specify which tile coordinates each frame uses?
  2. Is using Alternative Tiles + a runtime script to cycle them the only real workaround for packed tilesets?
  3. Is this a known limitation being addressed in future Godot versions?

The workaround I’ve found so far is to crop the animated tiles into a separate spritesheet and add it as a second Atlas source. This works but feels unnecessary for tiles that already exist in the sheet.

Any help appreciated, thanks!

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I diddnt find any workarounds in my experience, i think the default way is the only way

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I found the key info. No changes were made to atlas tile animation in Godot 4.6 — this has been a longstanding broken/confusing system since 4.0. But here’s the exact working process confirmed by someone who got it working: add the PNG as an atlas, make Godot Forum sure only the first frame becomes part of your tileset, then in Select mode click the first frame, set the number of animation frames, and click “Add Frame” once for each frame.

Heres how:

1. Add your PNG as an Atlas source, click No to auto-create

2. In Setup mode, make sure ONLY the first frame tile exists — delete any others

3.Select mode → click tile 1

4.Set Columns = number of frames

5.Click Add Element once per extra frame

6.Set Speed to something above 1