First Time Use

Online Assets in the Asset-Browser

There are some pre-requisites that must be complete before you will see all the assets. Please ensure that you have followed the steps HERE before continuing.

Getting the Library to load

The Online Assets library will appear empty on the first time accessing it. This is because we do not pack any of the materials in the addon, and they will be downloaded directly from online server when you drag-and-drop them into a scene.

You will first need to Click the [FETCH] button on the top right side of the asset-browser top-menu-bar:

Once you have clicked this, you will see on the same bar over to the right, a loading bar appear. This will start the process of downloading the catalog directory, NOT the assets. We only download the material data and icons at this point.

Once the Fetch process has complete. The library will then load in the asset-browser workspace. Please give this a moment, it may be slow depending on internet connection speeds, and then for all the icons to load may take some time depending on your CPU/GPU as we need to now store and load all those icons and material details.

Library

Once the Fetch has completed and the Library is loaded, you should see all the materials load in with icons and names.

Catalogs will not show yet
‍Because of how Blender handles the catalog system within the asset-browser, you will likely need to close and restart Blender for the catalog file to be called on, and then organize the content in the catalog panel on the left-side of the asset browser.

Once you have loaded the content, and the catalog appear, all the materials will be tagged and can be searched for using either the search bar in the asset browser, or via navigating the catalog menu and scrolling through the asset browser.

All materials will be tagged automatically based on the information the sites provide, so you can search keywords for material and sky types.

Using the assets

The assets are easy enough to use. You just select and then drag and drop the assets from the browser into the 3d viewport.

For Materials, you must drag and drop these onto objects. They will do nothing if you drag them into empty space in the viewport.

For Worlds, you can drag and drop them anywhere in the 3d Viewport and they will apply to the world shader.

Extra functions

Resolutions and Filetypes

The asset library assets come in different resolutions and file-types. With the asset selected in the browser, the top menu houses drop downs for changing the quality of that material or world, and also the file-type:

• Materials usually offer JPG or PNG variant, and between 1k and 16k resolutions
• Skies offer between HDR and Tonemapped variants, between 1k and 16k resolutions

Downloaded assets

If you have used assets previously, then to save on API calls and battering their servers with constant download traffic, we store the contents that you have already pulled in the download folder you should have set-up in the previous article. We offer a way to toggle between these stored assets, and the live assets with a button in the top-menu bar called [Show Downloaded].

This button will just toggle the content shown in the asset-browser workspace to the live and downloaded files.

You will also see a (downloaded) tag appear in the resolution selector against the resolution of asset you have previously download. Dragging and dropping this asset will not download it again, but will just pull from the already stored file.