Get your maps moving in Roll20

Roll20 is an online VTT that still does not support animated DND maps (or any animated maps) natively (unlike FoundryVTT or Astral), but that does not mean that you will have to stick to static maps on this platform for the rest of your days, and it will not cost you even a penny (no paywall or time limit) nor will it affect your storage space on your Roll20 account. If you play exclusively online and/or have invested into the platform it can be a VERY hard thing to part with it, despite of new modern frontiers, so we wrote this guide to still immerse your players with ever-moving environments! First things first though, we need some animated maps, don’t we?

Where to get animated tabletop maps from?

Make some yourself

• • Arkenforge lets you build animated maps specifically for tabletop and export them
  • Flowscape is a 3D tool for animated maps or scenery, you can record your creations in top down mode with OBS in a video format

Download animated DND maps by backing some creators on Patreon

• • Beneos battlemaps creates amazing maps of all genres
  • Mapguffin offers animated maps from his Silver tier upwards
  • ADM or Animated Dungeon maps
  • Living Realms
  • Dynamic Dungeons is the most popular animated map creator on Patreon.

Next, you will need the following:

After grabbing your maps, these are the important links that you will need:

1. Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox internet browser (your players need this too)
2. VTT Enhancement suite web browser extension (your players also need this)
3. Google drive (free version is perfectly fine)
4. Generating a direct link to your google drive file with Direct Link Generator

Disclaimer

We are not affiliated with VTT Enhancement Suite in any way, nor is the extension affiliated with Roll20. With this article and guide we would like to show you a way to utilize animated maps in a way we tested and works. While we can not give you further support with it, it is open source and source code for it can be found on GitHub. Justas Dabrila the developer run a Discord server to give you support and answer your questions should you need them. Please proceed installing and using this Extension at your own risk!

Video guide

 

Step by step guide

1. Install Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox if you haven’t already and open it
2. Download the VTT Enhancement suite web browser extension and install it:
   • For Chrome:
     1. Click here to start the download the zip file for Chrome. Place it somewhere easy to find.
     2. Clicking here will to open your Chrome extensions page or type: chrome://extensions in your browser and hit enter
     3. Enable Developer mode by clicking the switch on the top right corner of your browser window
     4. Click and drag the downloaded zip file into the open Extensions window.
     5. Make sure the extension is enabled (it should be by default, its just the little blue switch).
   • For Firefox:
     1. Click here to install the Firefox extension.
     2. Click on Add to Firefox.
     3. When the popup shows, click “Add”.
3. Get your players to install this extension as well.
4. Upload your video file to Google Drive in MP4 format, right click on it, click “Copy link to clipboard”
5. Once uploaded, click here, click into the “Enter a Google Drive sharing URL” field, right click and paste, or ctrl + v on your keyboard
6. Click on green “Generate Google Drive Direct link” button
7. Lastly on this page, copy the link generated. You can save this link into a text file or a note for later use.
8. After all this we can open Roll20, and start a game session
9. Click on the orange film button, paste your generated link into the Media URL field
10. You made it! You have animated DND maps in Roll20! Well done ! Click OK.