Lidarion Hexmap Studio

Lidarion Hexmap Studio is an Inkarnate-style cartography suite and world-building engine designed specifically for Foundry Virtual Tabletop (v14). It allows Gamemasters to craft, paint, detail, and explore vast, playable hexmaps directly within Foundry—without needing external image editors or third-party mapping software.

Key Features at a Glance

Feature Description
Dedicated Hexmaps Directory An independent Foundry sidebar tab (fa-hexagon-nodes) keeps your world maps organized and separate from standard tactical battlemaps.
Full-Screen Cartography Studio Intuitive painting suite with Brush, Flood Fill, Eraser, and Eyedropper tools, supporting brush radii from 1 to 6 hexes.
4 Layer Cartography Engine Build intricate overland maps using Standard Terrain, Custom Terrain, Objects/Props, and Vector Roads & Rivers.
In-Engine Custom Asset Workshop Turn any illustration into a standard, gapless hextile with visual Core Hex, Overhang, and Cutoff masking zones.
1-Terrain + 1-Object Stacking Engine Strict cell stacking rule: exactly one terrain tile and one object prop per hex cell, ensuring safe, non-destructive editing.
Interactive Scene Hub (Codex) A visual world atlas for your territories featuring custom art banners, rich-text lore notes, linked battlemap transitions, and drag-and-drop document binders.
Discrete Hex Fog of War Hex-based exploration reveals whole hexagonal tiles as tokens travel, replacing awkward circular vision bubbles.
Group Token Travel Animated, space-by-space party token movement across hexes at configurable travel speeds.
High-Performance Scene Baking Flatten maps with up to 250,000+ hex tiles into a single high-resolution WebP background for lag-free 60 FPS gameplay.

User Guide Navigation

Explore the comprehensive user manual through the following chapters:

  1. Chapter 1: Getting Started
    • Overview of the Hexmap Directory, creating new hexmap scenes, grid sizing, and scene management.
  2. Chapter 2: Hexmap Studio & Map Building
    • Painting tools (Brush, Fill, Eraser, Eyedropper), brush size scaling, random variant shuffling, the 1-Terrain + 1-Object rule, and drawing vector roads & rivers.
  3. Chapter 3: Custom Tile & Object Creator
    • Step-by-step guide to importing images, template zones (Core Hex, Overhang, Cutoff), 4-variant tile families, zoom & micro-adjustments, and custom category styling.
  4. Chapter 4: Regions, Locations & Scene Hub
    • Painting political borders and biomes, placing points of interest, using the interactive Scene Hub codex, linking battlemap scenes, and binding Actors/Items.
  5. Chapter 5: Playable Hexmaps & Performance
    • Discrete hex fog of war exploration, party token travel speed, atmospheric weather clouds, viewport culling, and baking composite maps for 250,000+ hexes.
  6. Chapter 6: Keyboard Shortcuts & Quick Reference
    • Complete cheat sheet of hotkeys, tool shortcuts, mouse controls, and module settings.

Tip for Gamemasters

You can open the studio at any time while viewing a hexmap scene by pressing Alt + H or by clicking the “Edit in Hexmap Studio” button in the Hexmaps sidebar directory.

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