Tiles

Overview

Foundry Virtual Tabletop includes support for placing Tiles, which are individual pieces of artwork displayed above the background image of the scene to add decorations, props, or custom features to be interacted with or to change the aesthetics of the scene.

This article will familiarize you with the two methods of placing tiles into scenes, and how to manipulate and configure them once placed.

Tile Controls

The tile layer tools have the following options available:

Tiles Control Palette
Tile Controls
Select Tiles
This tool allows you to select tiles to directly manipulate them. While a tile is selected you can hold down the shift or control keys and use your mouse wheel to rotate it. You can also click and drag it around the scene.
Place Tile
This tool allows you to draw out a rectangle then opens a dialog to let you select the specific artwork you want to place inside the confines of the rectangle.
Tile Browser
This tool opens a file browser for your instance of Foundry VTT which shows you all of the available images that foundry can use as map tiles. You can click and drag any image found in this browser to the current scene, placing it into the map. The tiles default to their full resolution, but can be resized after being placed.
Foreground Layer Toggle
Introduced in the 0.8.x. update series with the overhead tile system, this button toggles between the background and foreground on the Canvas Layers, allowing you to clearly see and interact with any overhead tiles currently in the scene while toggled on. When leaving the canvas layer this toggle is turned off automatically.

Placing Tiles

Tile Sprites - Placing Tiles
A demonstration of the two ways you can place tiles with the tile tools. (Click to enlarge)

To place or create Tiles, activate the Tiles Layer from the controls palette on the left hand side of the screen, and select one of the tile placement tools. Depending on which tool you select, the process is slightly different:

Place a custom tile
To do this use the second tool which looks like a cube and you can left-click drag a box which will form the basic shape for the tile. Once you release your left-mouse button you will be prompted to provide the configuration details for the Tile.
Use the File Browser
by clicking the folder icon in the tool palette you will be shown a File Picker where you can drag and drop image assets onto the Scene to create Tiles.

The Tile HUD

There are additional options for configuring the Tile in the HUD which is accessed on a single right-click.

The Tile HUD
The Tile HUD is accessed with a single right-click.

The buttons in the Tile HUD are, from top-to-bottom:

Toggle Visibility
Toggle the visibility state of the Tile, turning it from hidden to visible (or vice-versa).
Toggle Locked State
Toggle the locked state of the Tile. While locked, the Tile cannot be moved and is non-interactive.
Bring to Front
Bring the Tile to the front of the rendered Layer, displaying it above other nearby Tiles. If the tile is already at the front of the layer, this will increment the tile's Z-Index by 1 each time it's clicked.
Send to Back
Send the Tile to the back of the Tiles Layer, displaying it below other nearby Tiles. This will set the tile's Z-Index to one less than the lowest z-index tile in the scene. If the tile is already at the back of the layer, this will decrement the Z-Index of the tile by 1 each it's clicked.

Tile Configuration

Once a Tile is created, you can configure all the details of the Tile by double-clicking on the Tile. Once any changes to the Tile have been made, click the "Update Tile" button to confirm your changes. The tile configuration options are described below:

Tile Configuration
The Tile configuration sheet is accessed by double-clicking on a Tile and can customize the display and position of the Tile.

Tab: Basic

Tile Sprite
The image or video file path of the displayed tile. Note that Tiles can be either static images or videos. If using Video tiles, the .webm format is recommended to support transparency (if needed).
X-Position
The x-coordinate location of the top-left corner of the Tile.
Y-Position
The y-coordinate location of the top-left corner of the Tile.
Z-Index
The sorting place for the tile among other tiles on that layer, with higher Z-Index numbers being drawn overtop tiles with lower numbers. This can be used to manually sort tiles and how they are layered atop each other.
Width
The horizontal width of the desired Tile display.
Height
The vertical height of the desired Tile display.
Rotation
The rotation of the Tile, in degrees. You can directly edit this field, or quickly rotate a tile placed in a scene by holding down Shift or Control and using the W-A-S-D keys, the arrow keys, or the mousewheel. When used with the mousewheel, Control offers smaller increments of rotation than the Shift key, allowing for finer adjustments.
Tile Opacity
The opacity of the tile from 0 (transparent) to 1 (fully opaque). With this slider you can directly affect the default level of transparency the tile has on the canvas, which is good for tiles such as dirt, cracks, damage, and similar overlay tiles that might be too intense or stark at full opacity.
Tint Color
The color overlay on a tile represented in hex color code. The color is set to multiply over the art of the tile, which means that the darker the color is the more it will darken the tile. In this case black (#000000) will turn the tile entirely black while white (#ffffff) will not affect the appearance of the tile at all.

Tab: Overhead

The overhead tab of the tile configuration menu tab allows you to configure how a tile interacts with the canvas as an overhead tile.

Is Overhead?
Toggles if the tile is to be treated as an overhead tile. When on the tile cannot be modified while the Foreground Layer toggle is off in the Tile Layer tool sidebar. Overhead tiles are rendered above background tiles in the Canvas Layers. Overhead tiles are automatically hidden when actors move under them.
Occlusion Mode
The occlusion mode determines how the overhead tile interacts with actor tokens on the canvas.
None turns off occlusion, making the tile never fade while tokens are under it.
Fade causes the whole tile to fade when an actor token moves under it. This is the default setting when toggling overhead on.
Roof causes the tile to render above light sources and blocks weather effects on the map for any tokens under it.
Radial causes the tile to reveal the background in the vicinity of an actor token under it. The radius is determined by the token's size.
Occlusion Alpha
The occlusion alpha setting determines what level of opacity the overhead tile should maintain even when an actor token is under it. The setting ranges from 0 (transparent) to 1 (fully opaque). This setting defaults to 0, meaning that all overhead tiles fully vanish when an actor token moves under them.

Tab: Animation

The animation tab of the tile configuration menu allows you to configure how a video tile behaves on the canvas.

Loop Video
This toggle determines if the video should automatically start again after playing its last frame of animation.
Autoplay Video
This toggle determines if the video should automatically start playback when the scene loads, or if it should wait for the play button to be pressed on the token hud.
Video Volume
This slider determines the volume of video tiles that have sound. By default all tiles start with a volume setting of 0 (muted) to prevent unwanted audio playback.

API References

To interact with Tiles programmatically, consider using the following API concepts: