VTT export and import

A Universal VTT file (.dd2vtt) holds a picture of the map together with what a virtual tabletop needs to run it: walls, doors, windows and lights. Your assistant can write one from the map you have open, and rebuild a map from one when the original Dungeondraft file is gone.

Ask for a Universal VTT export, and your assistant writes one for Foundry, Roll20, Arkenforge or another VTT that reads the format. The map itself is not changed.

The file contains:

• the map image, rendered like an image export, at 100 pixels per grid square unless you ask for another size (100 is Foundry’s default). The grid is left out by default, because VTTs draw their own; ask for it if you want it in the image;
• walls, as sight lines broken at each door and window;
• doors and windows (see below);
• lights, with their colour, range, intensity and shadows, and the map’s ambient light;
• an outline for each object that blocks light, such as a boulder, crate or pillar, so it blocks sight in the VTT too.

Only real walls, doors and lights reach the VTT. Anything else, such as a door drawn as an ordinary object, is only part of the image and blocks nothing in the VTT.

The file goes beside the saved map, named after it, unless you give another location. An existing file is not overwritten unless you ask.

The Universal VTT format has no separate door and window types. Each portal is either closed or open, and VTTs treat a closed portal as an openable door that blocks sight and an open one as a window. So a door you left open in Dungeondraft arrives as a window, and a window set to closed arrives as a door.

When your assistant adds a door or window, it sets this from the asset, so new ones come out right. Before exporting a map you edited by hand, ask your assistant to check for reversed portals; it can list every door that is open and every window that is closed.

If you only have the .dd2vtt export of a map, your assistant can rebuild it. If you still have the original .dungeondraft_map, open that instead: a rebuild recreates the structure exactly but only approximates the art.

1. Preview. Your assistant first reads the file without changing anything, and tells you its size in tiles and what it would create: how many walls, doors, windows and lights, and how many sight-blocking objects it found. Nothing changes until you agree.
2. Choose packs. A map’s asset packs are fixed when it is created, so your assistant looks at the export’s image and works out which of your packs match the art before building. See Include your asset packs.
3. Import. On a new map of the same size (your assistant can resize it), it recreates the walls, doors, windows, lights and ambient light exactly, and lays the export’s image under the map as a trace to build on. Closed portals come in as doors and open ones as windows, so a map that had them reversed comes in reversed; your assistant compares each one with the image and fixes those that are wrong.
4. Rebuild the art. The export does not record which assets, terrain or paths drew the image, so your assistant rebuilds them by eye over the trace: ground first, then paths and edges, then a matching object on each sight-blocking outline, then everything else. It compares exports of its work with the original image as it goes.

Build on a new, empty map: imported doors attach to the nearest wall, including walls already there.

The import is preceded by a checkpoint, so you can ask your assistant to roll the import back in one go. That rollback does not undo a resize, the ambient light or the trace image. Before the final save, your assistant hides the trace: the map stores the trace image’s location on your computer, which would be broken anywhere else.

When it finishes, your assistant should tell you what came back exactly, what was rebuilt by eye, which packs it used, and anything in the image it could not match.

See known limitations for how object outlines and light ranges compare with Dungeondraft’s own export.