the lack of Blender assets browsing

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
#1

Over the years I have been waiting for assets browsing in blender, still not there.
With assets browsing I mean: that you are able to see a thumbnail of your assets, than just drag that into the scene.
For Models, materials and so on.

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Elubie/AssetBrowser

I had this thread in 2015 : https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?359758-A-serious-need-for-Assets-browsing-amp-Material-library

so here we are in March 2017, still notting, well almost. The people at Microvellum manage to make blender assets browsing, working very nice, so can it be that hard?

#2

Ton Roosendaal wrote this in:
Working on it: Bastien Montagne
Likely to happen in 2015: 98%

#3

Have you tried the Asset Management addon? https://blendermarket.com/products/asset-management/
Maybe it doesn’t do what you want?

#4

isn’t that one of the goals for 2.8?
edit:

#5

A proper asset browsing solution has been a while in the making because of the overhaul that was required of Blender’s asset management code in general.

This is a project that requires several steps (a few of which users are already benefiting from). Bastien is working on ID overrides now and will eventually get to where Asset browsing becomes a reality.

#6

isn’t that one of the goals for 2.8?
edit:
https://code.blender.org/2016/10/ass…-and-pipeline/

Because I’m not sure I understand this proposal well enough:
will that future asset management allow to customize linked libraries? Will it allow to add dynamics to linked library instances? Will the proxy mechanism - finally - work in a way that you can have multiple instances of one and the same library in a scene, each using a proxy of its own? Will viewport transparency work (because - IMO - GLSL viewport rendering is more and more becoming an alternative for projects where photo realism isn’t the goal)?
I really don’t care about asset browsing and other fancy GUI stuff. I’d rather like to see linked libs working, because they’re crucial for any larger project.

#7

Yeah all that is being worked on by Bastien right now as part of the ID override project. Viewport transparency though I don’t know, that’s a question for Mike Erwin and others involved in upgrading the viewport.

#8

Yes I have bought that one, but to be honest I am not a big fan of it.

#9

Thank you for clearing things up. I understand that things take time, and I am very greatful for what the team of developers is doing with Blender. Just a question though from a user perspective, could they not use the code that fluid designer have for assets browsing and also viewport transparency?

#10

Campbell just mentioned in the interface mailing list that a proper asset browser may come as part of the Blender 101 project (noting the possible utility it will provide).
https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-interface/2017-March/000225.html

So it’s becoming more likely that 2.8 will have what you are looking for.

#11

Ace, I realy hope you are right. I do also acnowledge that the developers have alot on their hands and heads

#12

I use Connector for my asset preview, I feel it would be kind of tedious to do it within Blender. Connector has custom searching, categories and folder browsing.

Here’s the link if you want to take a looksie.

#13

Nice app, but it would be rather useless with Blender, other than looking trough your files / assets

#14

The work Bastien Montagne is doing , if I understand correctly is to allow easier asset management.
He work also on an asset manager called Amber that use the new features he implemented. But the goal isn’t to make an ultimate asset management system in blender. Rather allow people to integrate better asset management for they own needs. Amber is , from what I understand more like an use case of an asset manager.

Because you’ll have very different need from an asset manager if you work alone, in small team , if it’s part of a bigger pipeline with tools like shotgun ect… It’s impossible to make something that fits everyone workflow.

I work mainly in animation field, where an asset manager is mostly used at the layout stage. You want to load/access only asset that are needed into you shot. You may want to do some special trick when linking them (do the armature proxy, put it on a different layer depending on what asset you’re loading, adding a special rest pose ect…) This is different from an asset manager you may want for yourself where you want to load pre-made geometry , shaders ect…