Getting Started

Install

Use Foundry’s Module Installer to add OBS Utils, then enable it in your world’s Module Management.

Set up your OBS browser source

Create a Browser Source in your OBS scene and point it at your Foundry server. The URL has two flavors:

• https://your-foundry.example/game — the standard game-board view
• https://your-foundry.example/stream — a chromeless stream view that renders only the overlays

Use the OBS Interact button to log in inside the source. If you want to use both views in one scene, create both sources and toggle visibility so only one is connected at a time.

OBS Mode

The browser source needs to be in OBS Mode so Foundry hides chrome, mutes audio, etc. There are three ways to enter OBS Mode (settings in the OBS Utils config):

Setting	What it does	When to use
Pin This Browser to OBS Mode	Client-side toggle. Every tab in the same browser stays in OBS Mode forever.	Last-resort for unusual setups — locks you in until you disable it.
Designate User as OBS Client	World setting. The chosen user is always treated as the OBS source no matter which browser they log in from.	Most common path: create a dedicated OBS user and pick it here.
Force OBS Mode on /stream	Always renders overlays on the /stream page regardless of user.	If your scene only uses /stream.

There’s also a Disable OBS Mode for Everyone kill-switch if a user accidentally pins themselves in.

OBS Browser Sources autodetect and enter OBS Mode automatically — you don’t need to flip anything for those.

Basic settings

In the world config:

• Minimum / Maximum Scale — bounds for camera zoom on the OBS view (relative to the scene’s background size).
• Pop-up Close Delay — seconds before automatically closing a journal or image popout that the GM opened.
• Show Combat Tracker in Combat — toggles the combat tracker sidebar visibility on the OBS view during a combat encounter.

Watch the Basic Setup tutorial for a visual walkthrough (predates V5 but the connection steps are unchanged).

The Director

The Director is the GM-side control panel for the OBS view. Open it via the Scene Controls button (the broadcasting-signal icon in the Token tools).

It is a tabbed interface — Controls, Presets, and Co-DMs are available out of the box, and third-party modules can register additional tabs via the registerDirectorTab API.

Controls

The day-to-day controls. Pick a camera-tracking mode for in-combat and out-of-combat, plus a target player if relevant.

Mode	Behavior
Track Owned Tokens	Follow tokens owned by the OBS user.
Track Active Owned Token	Follow the current-turn token if it’s owned by the OBS user.
Clone Selected Player	Mirror whatever player is picked in the Tracked Player dropdown.
Clone Active GM	Mirror the active GM’s viewport (see Multi-GM Handover for what “active” means with multiple GMs online).
Clone Turn Player	Mirror the current combat turn player’s viewport.
Fit Map to Scene	Zoom out to fit the entire scene.

Tracking mode keybindings

You can switch tracking modes from the keyboard without opening the Director. All bindings are editable in Foundry’s Configure Controls settings.

In-combat tracking mode — hold Ctrl+Shift and press a number key:

Key	Mode
Ctrl+Shift+1	Track all Owned Tokens
Ctrl+Shift+2	Track the currently active Owned Token
Ctrl+Shift+3	Track Player-Owned Tokens
Ctrl+Shift+4	Clone the Selected Player’s Viewport
Ctrl+Shift+5	Clone the DM’s Viewport
Ctrl+Shift+6	Fit Map to Screen
Ctrl+Shift+7	Clone the Turn Player’s Viewport

Out-of-combat tracking mode — hold Shift and press a number key:

Key	Mode
Shift+1	Track all Owned Tokens
Shift+2	Track a Manual List of Tokens
Shift+3	Track Player-Owned Tokens
Shift+4	Clone the Selected Player’s Viewport
Shift+5	Clone the DM’s Viewport
Shift+6	Fit Map to Screen

The Show Keybinding Notification setting (in the OBS Utils module config) controls whether a toast message confirms which mode was activated when a shortcut fires.

Below the mode radios, the Camera Smoothing section gives you an easing curve and a duration (0–1500ms) for camera tweens. All tracking modes use this — pans are no longer abrupt.

The cameraTrackingMode setting controls what gets sent to OBS observers: smooth (default) applies a moving average to recent viewport samples; dragRelease buffers all updates locally and only emits once the GM stops panning; raw sends every viewport tick with no buffering. This setting is driven from the Controls panel, not the standard module settings UI.

There are also toggle buttons for Limit Canvas to Edges, Pause Camera Tracking, and a Force-Open OBS Settings button (sends a Foundry settings dialog open command to the OBS client over socket).

Presets

See Scene Camera Presets.

Co-DMs

See Multi-GM Handover.

Stream Composer

The Stream Composer is the overlay editor — where you build, position, and animate the layers that appear on your stream view. Open it from Module Settings → Stream Composer (the dedicated settings menu entry registered by OBS Utils).

The editor has four workspace mode tabs:

• Settings — layer name, overlay type (Inline or Canvas), and tiling mode.
• Layout — drag-and-drop component arrangement inside the overlay.
• Animation — keyframe timeline for animating component properties; trigger-based track transitions.
• Preview — live preview of the overlay with a selectable actor.

Inline layers stack components in a single row. Canvas layers give you a free-placement 2D canvas where components can be positioned anywhere. See Stream Composer for the full editor guide.

OBS Utils also supports overlay animations with keyframe tracks, triggers to drive those transitions from Foundry events, and bundles for packaging and sharing complete overlay sets.

Foundry compatibility

• Minimum: 13.344
• Verified: 14