Bring your character portraits to life in Foundry’s audio/video dock.
LiveKit Animated Avatars lets you display your own looping videos or static images while your camera is off, with optional artwork that changes when you speak.
System agnostic: the module works with Foundry user accounts and the audio/video interface. It does not require a particular game system, character sheet or ruleset.
✨ What it does
- Animated idle portraits. Display a looping video while you are silent, or use a static image.
- Talking portraits. Choose optional alternative artwork that appears when LiveKit detects you speaking.
- Your own artwork. Use WebM, MP4 or static images supported by your browser.
- Individual user configuration. Players configure their own artwork; the GM can configure any user.
- Saved settings. Artwork paths are saved against user accounts in the Foundry world.
- Personal viewing preferences. Each browser independently chooses whether to display animated avatars.
- Camera support. When a user enables their camera, their live camera feed takes precedence.
Talking artwork is optional. You can use a single looping portrait to add movement without preparing a separate talking clip.
🎙️ How speaking detection works
The module uses LiveKit’s speaking indicators to switch between idle and talking artwork. Videos play silently while your existing LiveKit connection handles the voice conversation.
This provides a visual response to speech. It does not identify individual sounds or generate phoneme-specific mouth movements. Any mouth animation must already be present in your chosen video.
⚙️ Requirements
- Foundry VTT 14.
- LiveKit AVClient, installed and enabled.
- A working LiveKit audio/video connection.
- LiveKit’s Use separate window for A/V option switched off.
- Artwork files accessible through Foundry.
LiveKit’s interface must run within the main Foundry browser window. The LiveKit server can continue running separately as usual.
The module does not require Live Actors, OBS or a separate speech-analysis agent.
▶️ Getting started
- Install and enable LiveKit AVClient and LiveKit Animated Avatars.
- Configure and connect Foundry’s audio/video chat through LiveKit.
- Open Game Settings → LiveKit Animated Avatars → Configure Avatars.
- Select the user whose artwork you want to configure.
- Browse for or upload idle artwork.
- Optionally select separate talking artwork.
- Save the artwork configuration.
- Enable Show animated avatars in this browser and save your viewing preference.
- Keep your camera off and speak to test the portrait change.
Each participant who wants to see animated portraits must enable the viewing option in their own browser.
👥 Player preferences and permissions
The GM can configure artwork for any user. Players can configure their own artwork.
Artwork choices are shared through the world, while the animation viewing preference belongs to each browser. Turning animations off restores the normal portrait presentation for that viewer without deleting the saved artwork configuration.
Browsing and uploading files requires the appropriate Foundry permissions. If a player cannot upload files, the GM can upload their artwork and configure the paths.
🎨 Preparing your portraits
No artwork or audio is included with the module. Users supply their own files.
For consistent results:
- Use short videos that loop smoothly.
- Keep idle and talking artwork at matching dimensions.
- Match the character’s framing and position between clips.
- Check that the browser can play the video’s codec.
- Keep file sizes modest, particularly when displaying several animated portraits.
🛠️ Support and feedback
Report problems through GitHub Issues.
Include your Foundry version, LiveKit AVClient version, module version, browser and the steps needed to reproduce the problem. For playback issues, include the media format and any relevant browser-console error.
View the source code and releases
Acknowledgements
Inspired by Baileywiki’s demonstration #FoundryVTT!! How to create your own animated tokens, tiles, and battlemaps.