Browsing, starring, groups

Opening the browser

There is no standalone command that opens the asset library. The browser is a popup that something else asks for, and what asked for it decides what the browser is scoped to. It opens centred on the main 3D viewport and you can drag it by its title strip.

Four things open it, all of them in DESIGN:

• —Clicking a material or prop slot's preview on a DESIGN card. The title reads PICK A MATERIAL, PICK A PROP or PICK AN IMPERFECTION. If the slot only accepts one category, the title names it — PICK AN ASPHALT MATERIAL — and the category tree is shown read-only so the pick cannot wander.
• —The + button on a scattering system's objects row. This one is multi-select: Assign hands back every card you picked.
• —The composer's pick button while the prompt is in Edit material or Edit prop mode. The title reads SCENE MATERIALS — PICK TO EDIT and the grid is narrowed to assets actually in the scene; clicking cards toggles the prompt's edit targets and the footer button is Done.
• —The Generate with AI popup's add-asset button, which uses a pick as a reference image for the prompt.

What a card tells you

Each card is one asset: its preview image and its name. Everything else about it is an overlay on the preview or a line in the footer.

Select a card and the footer's left-hand line reads the asset's name, its category, whether it came from Library or Custom, and up to four of its tags. With nothing selected it reads No selection — click a card to select it.

The footer buttons follow the selection. With one asset picked you get Assign, Regenerate and Add to group; with several, Assign counts them (Assign 3). With nothing picked the only action is Generate with AI. A prop with no model cannot be assigned at all — Generate Model takes Assign's place. A material whose config asked for PBR maps and has none is still assignable, so Generate PBR appears beside Assign rather than instead of it. Both are covered in Single materials and props.

Narrowing the grid

Four controls narrow what the grid shows, and they combine — each one is applied on top of the others.

• —The kind menu, in the title strip beside the search box. Materials and Props are toggles, not a choice: both can be on at once, and the menu collapses to All types when they are. A browser opened for one kind shows that kind as on and does not let you turn it off.
• —The category tree in the sidebar. Materials and Props are the top-level nodes; the arrow expands a node and the checkbox filters by it. Checking a parent matches its whole subtree, so checking Asphalt keeps both of its subfolders. No boxes checked means no category filter.
• —The view menu above the tree, which reads All assets when nothing is on.
• —The TAGS box at the bottom of the sidebar. It lists the selected asset's tags as pills; toggling one filters the grid to every asset carrying that tag, and turning on two asks for assets carrying both. An active tag stays listed after you select something else, so it can always be turned back off. With no tags to show, the box disappears entirely.

The view menu holds three filters:

Beside the view menu is a refresh button, which is not a filter: it re-scans the asset folders now. You rarely need it, because the scan re-runs on a timer and files dropped into a folder surface on their own, but it is the control to press after moving a lot of files at once.

The count line above the tree reads N found. Beside it, page-size chips appear only when they would do something: 20, 50 and 100 each show only while they actually truncate the result, and All is offered only between 21 and 200 results — every card loads a preview image, so drawing a four-thousand-asset library at once is not on offer. The size you pick sticks for the rest of the Blender session; it starts at 50.

Search

The search box sits in the centre of the browser's title strip. It matches against three things joined together: the asset's display name, its category path, and its tags.

Results are sorted by display name, with one exception: while a browser opened from a slot still has that slot's current asset selected, that asset is pinned first. Deselecting it lets it fall back into alphabetical order.

The folder icon at the end of the title strip opens your asset folder in Windows Explorer — the Library Folder if one is set, otherwise your first custom folder. With neither configured, the footer says so and points you at the addon preferences.

Starring

A star sits at the top left of a card's preview. Click it to star the asset, click it again to remove it. It is a state indicator rather than a button, so the only thing that changes is the shape: outline for unstarred, solid for starred.

1. Find the asset and click its star. The change is saved to your account.
2. Open the view menu and switch on Starred. The first time you do this in a Blender session, the browser fetches your starred and grouped assets from the cloud; after that it is instant.
3. The grid now shows only starred assets, still subject to whatever else is on — kind, categories, tags and search all still apply.

Cards for assets with a fill-in-the-gap job in flight carry no controls at all — no star, no report, and they cannot be selected — until that job finishes.

Groups

A group is a name of your own filed against an asset: a shelf you invent, rather than a category the library gave it. Select exactly one card and press Add to group in the footer to open the dialog.

• —The Group menu lists every group you already have, each with the number of assets in it, so filing into an existing group is a pick rather than retyping a name.
• —New group… enables the text field below it. The name may be up to 80 characters.
• —— not in a group — takes the asset out of its group. A group with no assets in it stops existing.
• —Blender confirms with Filed under <name>, or Removed from its group.

An asset has one group and one group only; filing it somewhere else moves it rather than adding it. Starring and grouping are independent — starring an asset leaves its group alone, and filing an asset leaves its star alone.

Like starring, grouping needs an asset with a cloud identity. Select one from your own folders and the footer answers This is a local asset — it has no cloud identity instead of opening the dialog. The same rule governs Regenerate and the report icon.

Reporting an asset

The report icon lives in the browser's header, one slot left of Close. It opens a small dialog naming the asset, with one field for what is wrong. The dialog says plainly what it is about to do: it stops being used in new generations right away.

A message is required; sending an empty one is refused with Tell us what is wrong first.