Living Assets

A Living Asset is character artwork that moves. Not an animation replacing the picture — the same portrait, breathing, with a cloak that shifts and hair that drifts. The goal is that someone who knows the original should still recognise it at a glance and only then notice it is alive.

You build one in the Living Assets Lab, reached from Media in the dashboard sidebar.

The two ways in

Everything downstream is the same; the only question is whether your artwork is already separated into layers.

Start from a flat portrait. Most artwork is a single image. You mark the parts that should move — hair, a cloak, a weapon arm — and each one is cut out into its own layer for you.

Start from your own layers. If you painted the piece yourself, or bought a layered pack, you already have the separation. Export the layers as PNGs from Photoshop, Procreate, Krita or Clip Studio and use Import layer set — they come in exactly as drawn, with nothing to cut out and nothing to repair.

💡Tip

Layer files must share one canvas size, which is what every editor's "export layers" command produces. Name them so they sort in stacking order — 01_background, 02_body, 03_cloak — and the stack arrives in the right order.

Building the asset

The Lab walks through seven steps, and the panel at the top always shows which one you are on.

  1. Select — mark each part that should move, and create its layer.
  2. Layers — review the separated artwork and its stacking order.
  3. Mesh — lay a light deformation grid over a moving layer.
  4. Adjust — drag control points until the artwork bends naturally.
  5. Bones — build a joint chain for parts that move as one rigid piece, like an arm.
  6. Motion — choose a restrained movement for each part.
  7. Finish — check the edges, the repaired areas, and the resting frame.

You can save a draft at any point and come back to it.

📝Note

Keep the movement smaller than feels right. A portrait that obviously animates reads as a video; one that barely moves reads as alive. The Motion step's defaults are deliberately restrained for this reason.

Atmosphere and lighting

The Finish step also carries the presentation controls: drifting mist or motes, a warm key light, magical effects anchored anywhere on the artwork, and a background treatment that pushes the setting back so the character reads forward.

These are saved with the asset, so they follow it everywhere it is used — the preview, a map token, and any image you export.

📝Note

Background treatment needs a separated background layer to work on. On artwork that is still a single layer there is nothing behind the subject to treat, and the panel will say so.

Using a Living Asset

Open an NPC, monster, deity or species entity and use the Living Asset control in the sidebar to attach a finished asset. A campaign character sheet has the same control.

Map tokens follow automatically. A token has no Living Asset of its own — it wears whatever the NPC or character it is linked to is wearing, so re-cutting an NPC's artwork updates every token depicting it at once.

Exporting an image

From the Finish step you can download the artwork as a still image:

  • Map token — round, cropped to the centre you chose, ready to drop into any virtual tabletop.
  • Portrait — the full artwork at its own proportions.

Exports carry the atmosphere and lighting you set, so the file matches what you see on the map. If the original artwork does not hold enough detail for the size you picked, the export says so and gives you its true size rather than an enlarged, softer copy.

What it costs

Cutting a layer out of a flat portrait, and repairing the area revealed behind it, both use AI and are charged in Runes. Your current balance is shown in the dashboard, and the Lab tells you before you spend.

Importing your own layers costs nothing — there is nothing to separate and nothing to repair.

Current limits

Living Assets are still in development, and two things are worth knowing before you build a lot of them:

  • Players do not see the motion yet. Living tokens render on your map, in your session view. The player portal shows the static artwork. Exporting a token image and setting it as the token's art is the way to give players something today.
  • Effects recipes saved in the Presentation studio are separate. They are tuned against a world image rather than a layered asset, and cannot be attached to a character. Build the asset in the layer studio if you want to attach it.