Preview vs Original assets

One of our main priorities with our addon is ease of use and speed. Both are important for new artist and professionals trying to optimize their workflow. For this reason we have decided to go with the following approach. Each asset on in our library has a Preview asset and a Original asset. An Original Asset is the actual asset that can be used in your scene. It has metadata (description,author,tags) and can be any of the type of assets we currently have in our library. A preview asset is an empty copy of that Original asset. It does however have the same thumbnail and metadata.This means that if you sync assets you first download their preview that are in general very small in size. Because it only contains the metadata and an empty with the same type as an original.

Example of preview vs original in 3d viewport

For example: A preview of an object asset will only hold a empty as its asset because this is the same type as an object. A preview material asset holds a empty material asset. With this approach a full library can be downloaded and takes up minimum space. The user can then decide which assets he want to use and download the original version of it. It also allows the user to free up space by removing original assets. When the user syncs the library after removing the original assets it will detect the missing asset and download its preview again. You can spot the difference between a Preview and an original without dragging it in the scene. Preview assets will have the Blue Cloud icon on the lower right side

Side by side same asset Original | Preview

Example of two assets Left is an original, Right is still a preview

Different type of assets

At this moment we have 5 different type of assets in our library

• Objects

• Collections

• Materials

• Material Nodegroups

• Geometry Nodes

The symbols on the lower left of a Preview asset or Original asset indicates what type of asset it is. For material nodegroups the preview will be a shaderball with the effect on it but with a nodegroup icon.

Other asset types will be supported in the future. For example particle systems are not supported in the asset browser as asset. However we do have particle system in our library they are shown as collection or object. A user can simple drag in the original asset and then copy the particle system to a different object. More tools will be created and as the add-on grows we will have different solutions for types that are currently not supported in the asset browser.