I have been applying custom html/css layout to hippo. in homepage-main.ftl I have an image which is 1366x518 and ~400KB in size. Here's how it's implemented.
<img src="<@hst.webfile path="/images/homebanner.jpg"/>"/> However, when I run Hippo CMS it doesn't load (404 error in Chrome dev tool console) the banner image but it shows all the other images. I checked cms.war and i found this image inside cms->WEB-INF->lib->[projectname]-bootstrap-content-[snapshot version].jar. I put a small size image instead of homebanner.jpg and it worked. I am not sure whether this is an issue on Hippo CMS or Tomcat 8 configuration. any answer would be really appreciated.
Simple answer: Webfiles are limited to 256kb by default, it won't pick up anything bigger. See also: http://www.onehippo.org/library/concepts/web-files/web-files-configuration.html if you want to change the max file size.
I would reccomend looking at making your banner configurable from within the CMS and using Imagesets for larger sizes.