I’ve created a new asset management addon for Blender 2.8, Asset Wizard. You may ask why another one? There is SimpleAssetManager which I really like and many thanks to Dawid Huczyński for his great work on it. This project started by some modifications to this, but is now a complete rewrite.
So what is different in Asset Wizard?
Both object and material importers are always at your hand.
Preview rendering is more comfortable and accessible directly from the panel, you can rerender the selected asset, render missing assets or all assets.
Rendering takes place in the background, the primary panel shows the current process, so you can continue work during rendering process.
Previews can either be rendered in Cycles or Eevee (see preferences).
All panels have a full or compact (default) view (see images below, setting in preferences).
Assets (both object and materials) must be stored in categories.
SimpleAssetManager’s asset structure is compatible with those of Asset Wizard.
There’s an object export panel, which exports the selected object(s) into either .blend or .fbx.
New categories can be created directly from the UI without the file explorer.
After export, the preview is rendered automatically and the UI updates.
My previously released addon Node Wizard is now a sub part of Asset Wizard (the standalone version is discontinued).
New part of the Node Wizard is Node Wizard Export, just below the Node Wizard panel. It either exports the current material as asset or directly generates an asset from a PBR texture set using the same features as the object exporter (category creation/selection and auto render).
One downside in comparison to SimpleAssetManager: There is currently no particle or HDRI support. Another thing is missing documentation, which is a point on my TODO list.
And yes, it’s completely free (GPLv3). Any feedback is very welcome.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/weybec02/Downloads/blender-2.80-69b2f5268114-linux-glibc224-x86_64/2.80/scripts/modules/addon_utils.py", line 393, in enable
mod.register()
File "/home/weybec02/.config/blender/2.80/scripts/addons/object_assert_wizard/__init__.py", line 135, in register
dirs = categories(asset_type)
File "/home/weybec02/.config/blender/2.80/scripts/addons/object_assert_wizard/utils.py", line 31, in categories
path = os.path.join(PreferencesPanel.get().root, asset_type)
File "/home/weybec02/.config/blender/2.80/scripts/addons/object_assert_wizard/preferences.py", line 49, in get
return bpy.context.preferences.addons[PreferencesPanel.bl_idname].preferences
KeyError: 'bpy_prop_collection[key]: key "object_asset_wizard" not found'
It works with this update fine.
One note after a quick test: objects seem too small on preview images - could they fit the entire image?
It’s great idea to export assets directly from the panel!
I agree with @blndrusr, the export functionality in the panel is a great feature.
Bug: If the object is bigger than 2m (default cube as example) the thumbnail is cropped.
Good work!
P.S. The “spelling bug” is not in the code but in the folder name. It is not necessary to hack the code. You can install the addon and then go to “user_folder_for_each_os/Blender Foundation/Blender/2.80/scripts/addons” and change the name of the folder from “object_assert_wizard” to “object_asset_wizard”
I actually like this better than the other ones. Just one wish … That materials were such that one blend file can have many materials instead of one blend file for each material. It would take me a long time to get my files like this. Thank you for the work you have put into this
I mistyped the folder name while packaging the addon Thanks to @FreeAccess and @txusmiCG for the quick fixes, I was really busy yesterday. I’ve updated the original download link in the initial post to version 0.1.1 which hopefully works now. Still busy this morning
Regarding the wishes of @blndrusr and @Ector3 … I’ll check to do better approximating the view and support multi-material links in the next release, have some ideas how to handle this.
Rendering (on Linux) gives some X11 errors - see attached log,
Maybe it’s related to the above, rendering queue sometimes keeps displaying a message as it was still active, while all pictures are finished,
Camera clipping makes an object invisible on rendered image if its dimensions are smaller than 0.05m - attached cube was exactly 0.05m (large objects are rendered correctly).
This is something blender generates called without UI on Linux. I’m unsure if I can do something to prevent this. I have to look at it next time I have a Linux desktop running.
I saw this 1 or 2 times during development, but currently have no idea where this comes from. Will still look after this. If someone finds a way to reproduce this bug, I may be able to fix it.
Will fix this in the next release. You can easily do it yourself, just open the data/preview.blend in the plugin directory and set the near clipping value of the camera to 0.0000001.