Named roles in templates

Give every piece a named role — Police officer, Angel, DJ — whose signature parts decide how it looks, while everything else still varies.

📷 Screenshot placeholder — the template editor with the Role layer selected: roles as name cards, Add role, Upload one-of-ones.

A template can be built two ways. Modular: every piece is just its parts, and rarer parts make rarer pieces. Named roles: each piece also gets a role, such as Police officer, Angel or DJ, and the role decides some of the parts it shows. Everything a role doesn't decide still varies, so you get a green Police officer and a blue one, one with feathered wings and one with bat wings.

Modular or roles

A template is modular until it has a Role layer. In New template → Building by hand?, choose Start modular or Start with roles; the second makes the Role layer straight away. You can also add it later with + Add Role layer under the layer list, or remove it (after removing its one-of-ones). Collectible, marketplace and drop templates can have roles; keepsake sets can't.

The Role layer

Every piece gets one role, rolled first by its weight. The role layer is never optional.
A role has no picture of its own. It is a name, and its look comes from the parts shown for it. Its card shows its initials, weight and switch; Add role takes a name and a weight.
A one-of-one is the only picture on the Role layer: a complete, flattened piece with everything drawn in, placed on exactly one item on its own. Make one-of-one uploads its picture; any picture uploaded onto the Role layer becomes a one-of-one. It may be fully opaque.
Combinations are counted per role, so you can see how many pieces each role can make.

Shown for, and signature parts

Shown for on a trait of any other layer limits it to some roles: Halo only for Angel. A trait without it is open to every role.
A requires rule from a role makes that role always show a part: Police officer requires Police cap.
Signature parts: each role needs a part it always shows and no other role can show (shown for that role only, and required by it). Without one, two roles could produce the same picture, and Publish says which pair. One "base" role may go without.
One item per layer per piece. A layer rolls exactly one of its traits (or none, if it's optional), so two Head items never appear together.

Trial draw

The Trial draw card runs the real draw over up to 50,000 pieces with a throwaway seed and shows each role's share against its weight and each rarity tier's share against DappFactory's ladder. Nothing is saved. Use it before publishing to check the roles come out as you expect.

Start from a DappFactory role template

When DappFactory offers role templates, New template shows Start from a DappFactory role template. Pick one, name your copy and Copy into my templates: you get a draft of your own with every layer, role, weight, Shown for, rule and picture. Change anything. Your copy never changes DappFactory's, and theirs never changes yours.

Briefing your artist

Ask for parts, not pictures. The artist draws each part once; the platform combines them.

One canvas size for every file (for example 3000 × 3000), PNG.
Transparent around the drawing on every layer but the first. A part more than 90% solid is refused (usually an export with the background left in). Background and one-of-ones may be opaque.
One folder per layer, numbered in drawing order (bottom first), and a manifest.json that names the layers, traits, weights, which roles each trait is shown for, and the rules. Load a sample set or a DappFactory role template, download it, and hand the artist that structure.
A signature part for every role, drawn so it reads at a glance (a police cap, a halo, a gavel).
One-of-ones as complete pictures: everything drawn in, the full canvas, one file each in the Role layer's folder.
Keep the names. New parts are welcome; add them in the editor or the manifest with who they're for.