Visual Studio

Writing complex fiction means juggling visual references. Character art commissioned or pulled from Pinterest. Maps you drew yourself or downloaded from a worldbuilding toolkit. Mood boards that establish the visual tone of a specific location. Costume studies for a particular era. Weapon references. Architectural sketches. Real-world photographs that inspired a fictional place. All of it usually ends up in a scattered mess across your desktop folders, your Pinterest boards, your screenshot archives, and whatever else, and by the time you need to find a specific image — “what did I have for Nubia’s appearance?” — it’s faster to Google the name of an actor you think looks right than to dig through your own collection. Visual Studio is the module that fixes this. It’s a visual reference manager that keeps your images next to your writing, linked to your Legendry, and organized by project. It’s also a character sheet designer with agent-driven layout generation, which is a completely different feature that happens to live in the same module because both are visual-output tools.

This page covers both pieces.

Gallery

Gallery

The Gallery is where images, video, audio, and document references live. It has upload tools, folder organization, multiple view modes, a mood board canvas, and tight integration with your Legendry for linking visual assets to lore entries.

Uploading

Four ways to get files into the Gallery:

• Drag and drop. Drop files anywhere on the gallery surface to upload. The fastest workflow for small batches.
• File picker. Click the upload button and select individual files through the standard file dialog.
• Folder upload. Upload an entire folder with a recursive option for subfolders. Useful for bringing in an existing reference collection all at once.
• Bulk upload. Multiple files in a single operation.

Supports images (JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, SVG), video, audio, and documents. The 20 MB per-file size limit is configurable in settings.

Projects

Visual Studio has its own project concept that lives alongside your writing projects. A project in Visual Studio is a named container with a description, status, tags, and a thumbnail. Switching projects loads a different set of assets.

Most authors use one Visual Studio project per book, matching the structure of their writing projects. Keeping them aligned means the visual references for Book One are separate from Book Two, and you’re not scrolling through mixed asset sets.

Folders

Each project can have a nested folder tree for organization:

• Create folders within a project, with optional nesting to any depth.
• Folder tree in a collapsible sidebar with asset counts visible per folder.
• Move assets between folders via drag and drop or the context menu.
• Move folders under different parents to reorganize.
• Folder types — general, reference, character, location, object, concept. The type is purely organizational; it doesn’t affect behavior.

Browsing and filtering

Three view modes for looking at your assets:

• Grid view. Thumbnail cards. The default. Best for visual browsing.
• List view. Compact rows with filenames and metadata. Best for quick scanning when you know the name.
• Mood Board view. A free-form canvas. Covered in its own section below.

Filters and sorts:

• Type filters — All, Images, Video, Audio, Documents, Other.
• Sort modes — Newest first, Oldest first, Name (alphabetical).
• Semantic search across asset names, descriptions, and tags. Type a query and the list narrows to matches by meaning, not just keyword.
• Folder scoping — click a folder in the tree to show only its contents and descendants.

Asset details

Select an asset to open the detail drawer:

• Name — editable inline.
• Description — editable text field. Use for context, attribution, or whatever notes matter.
• Tags — add and remove inline.
• Entity links — link assets to lore entries (characters, locations, etc.) with a label. This is the killer feature — it’s how an image on Kent Musa’s Legendry entry gets there.
• File metadata — type, dimensions, creation date, project.

Lightbox viewer

Double-click any asset (or click once and pick “View”) to open the lightbox:

• Zoom and pan. Mouse wheel zooms; drag pans. Full gesture support.
• Navigation. Left and right arrows browse the current filtered set.
• Info toggle. Show or hide the metadata overlay over the image.
• Media support. Images render directly; video and audio show player controls.

Mood Board

Mood boards are for visual tone

Switch to Mood Board view to arrange asset cards on a free-form canvas. Pan around, zoom in and out, drag cards wherever you want them. It’s the best way to establish the visual tone for a specific scene, location, or character before you start writing — not as structured as the grid view, but that’s the point.

Mood Board view lays assets out on a free-form canvas instead of a grid:

• Drag cards to position asset cards anywhere on the canvas.
• Pan and zoom — middle-click and drag to scroll, mouse wheel to zoom.
• Bring to front — dragging a card raises it above others in the stack order.
• Auto-layout. New assets that don’t have an assigned position get arranged in a grid.
• Persistent layout. Card positions and viewport state save automatically and restore when you come back.
• Click any card to open its lightbox view.

Mood boards are saved as part of the project. You can have multiple projects with different mood boards, and the layouts persist across sessions.

Bulk operations

Toggle bulk selection mode to select multiple assets:

• Bulk delete and bulk move to a target folder.
• Clear selection to exit bulk mode.

Useful for large cleanup passes when you’re reorganizing an inherited collection.

Character Sheets

Character Sheets

The Character Sheet Designer is a completely different feature from the Gallery — they share the Visual Studio module but they don’t share data, workflows, or purpose. This section is about designing and filling in character sheets, usually for TTRPG use or structured character tracking.

For the full Character Sheet Designer documentation, see Visual Studio → Character Sheets. The short version follows.

Three-phase workflow

Character sheets go through three phases from concept to usable document:

Phase 1: Describe

Enter a natural language description of the character sheet you want. “A fantasy RPG character sheet with stats, skills, equipment slots, and a backstory section.” Press Ctrl+Enter or click Generate. The designer creates a structured layout with sections and fields based on your description.

Phase 2: Preview

Review the generated layout as a live preview. You have three options at this stage:

• Refine. Provide natural language feedback to adjust the layout (“Make the stats section wider,” “Add a notes field at the bottom,” “Use a two-column layout instead of three”). The designer regenerates based on your feedback.
• Save as Template. Save the layout under a custom name so you can reuse it for other characters.
• Use This Layout. Accept the current layout and move to the fill-in phase.

Phase 3: Use

Fill in the character sheet fields:

• Each field is a dynamic input matching the layout structure.
• Enter a character name at the top.
• Save Character persists the filled sheet.
• Print opens the print dialog for a paper-friendly export.

Template system

Any generated layout can be saved as a named template for reuse. The sidebar shows all your saved templates; click one to start a new character from that template instead of generating a fresh layout from scratch.

Templates are useful when you’re running a game or writing a series where multiple characters need the same sheet structure. Generate the layout once, save it, reuse it for every new character.

Character sheet management

Sheets persist in the Character Sheets sidebar. Save, load, and delete from there. Click “New Sheet” to start fresh with a new description or template.

Full documentation — including the link to Magic System stat blocks that’s what makes character sheets powerful — lives on the dedicated Character Sheets page.

Where Gallery fits with the rest of Ishvana

A few integrations worth knowing:

• Legendry entries can link to Gallery assets. A character entry gets a visual assets section that shows any images linked to that character. Open the character, see their portrait immediately.
• Bookmaker can pull Gallery assets into compiled books — chapter start images, full-page illustrations, inline figures. The Bookmaker’s image picker reads from the Visual Studio Gallery.
• Maps are a separate module but visually adjacent — map images can be stored in the Gallery and referenced from lore entries.

What’s next

Visual Gallery (deep) The full Gallery reference — upload, organize, tag, link, mood board.

Character Sheets (deep) The full Character Sheet Designer documentation.

Maps Interactive cartography with annotations linked to your Legendry.

Legendry Attach visual assets to lore entries for quick reference.