Asset Management

Using quality multimedia assets such as images, sound, and videos within Foundry VTT can dramatically increase your game's quality and immersion.

This article covers:

• Finding suitable assets for your game
• Uploading assets so that you can use them inside Foundry VTT
• Properly backing up your assets

Additional details and approaches that are more suitable for power users are also provided at the end of the article.

Finding Suitable Assets

Fortunately, an incredible community of talented artists and other creators has emerged to help bring VTT games to life. Many such creators already have massive libraries of free and paid assets and are creating more every day.

"Uploading" Assets

Once you've found useful asset files, you need to "upload" files before you can use them. The word "uploading" is in quotation marks here because it isn't quite being used in the traditional way.

Typically, "uploading" means transferring files from your own computer to different one. In the context of Foundry, however, "uploading" means "moving or copying files into your User Data folder", even if they stay on the same computer. Rearranging files in this way is necessary because Foundry can only access files that are inside this folder.

Note: When you are naming your files and folders it is a good idea to avoid spaces or special characters.

You can either upload files inside Foundry VTT or using your operating system.

Uploading Files Using the Foundry VTT File Picker

You can also upload a file directly through the Foundry VTT user interface. For example, if you want to upload an image to use as a scene background, you could use the Scene Configuration window to copy the file into your user:

Uploading and protected file locations

To encourage good file management practices, starting in Version 13 uploads to certain locations inside the User Data folder are prohibited, including:

This prohibition is only enforced within the Foundry VTT filepicker, so you can still "upload" files into these locations outside of Foundry. Additionally, developers and power users have additional control over upload permissions for many of these locations.

FAQ: Why is my Upload button gray and disabled?

If the Upload button is disabled, uploads are not permitted in the current file location.

To upload your file, you will need to pick or create a different folder.

• If you see a top-level folder named assets, you can always upload into that.
• If you create a new top-level folder (next to the assets, modules, systems, and worlds folders), you can upload into that also.
• You can always upload into the folder of the world that is currently running.

FAQ: Why can't my players upload files?

By default, players cannot upload files.

If you want to give players permission to upload their own files onto your server, you will need to configure your user permissions first so that they have the Upload New File permission. For more information, see the Users and Permissions article.

Bulk Uploading Files Outside Foundry

If you want to upload many files to use in Foundry VTT such as entire folders of token artwork, using the filepicker to upload the files one at a time is not a practical solution. The proper way to bulk upload files depends on your hosting method:

Self-hosted

If you run Foundry VTT on your own computer (typically by clicking an icon to launch it), you are considered "self-hosted." Because your Foundry server is running on your own computer, you can open your User Data folder and drag and drop files and folders as usual.

Hosting partner

If you use one of our official hosting partners, you will need to consult their website or Discord to determine the best way of uploading files onto your server.

Personal dedicated server

If you or your friend have setup your own dedicated server that is running Foundry VTT, you typically use a SFTP application such as FileZilla)to transfer your files into the server's user data folder.

Assets and Backups

Foundry VTT has a built-in backups feature that can be very helpful in recovering your data or reverting a world to a past state. Occasionally, after restoring a backup, a user is surprised by one or more broken links to their assets.

Please Note: Your multimedia assets are likely not included when you take a backup within Foundry.

When you back up a world, only the contents of that World are backed up. This means that any assets that are stored in different folder locations are not backed up each time a backup is taken. This saves significant amount of hard drive space, but you need to ensure that any assets used in the world are in the same relative position that the backup expects.

For example, if you had a token image saved directly inside the assets folder but you later reorganize your files and move it to a new assets\tokens folder, when you restore to the older backup the token's image will be a broken link.

Storing all assets that you use inside your Foundry worlds in a single folder (like the assets folder) helps you keep all your assets together, making it easier to periodically take a manual backup copy of these images.

Additional Power User Details

Most users will never have to know this information, but it is included as a reference for experienced users who are looking to take full advantage of Foundry VTT's capabilities.

Controlling Folder Upload Permissions

The mechanism for prohibiting uploads into individual world, module, and system folders is the canUpload line inside the folders's corresponding world.json, system.json, or module.json file:

"flags": {
    "canUpload": true
  },

If the canUpload key is omitted it is considered false by default.

Relevant API Links

• Manifest specification
• Package flags definition

S3 Integration

You can also use cloud storage such as Amazon S3 or a similar bucket to store your assets. For more information, please see the S3 integration article.