Preferences
The add-on preferences hold five settings and twenty-one colour swatches. Two of the five decide where your assets are stored and which of your own folders iCity is allowed to read; the rest are one import option, one development switch, and the extra asset folders.
Finding the preferences
The settings live where every Blender add-on keeps them: Edit → Preferences → Add-ons, then expand iCity 2. The gear button in the iCity Editor header, between the account button and the notifications bell, opens the same Preferences window.
The iCity Editor header at its right end, showing the three buttons in order — the account/user button, the gear (settings) button, and the bell. Signed in, so the account button is the user icon rather than a Login label.
The expanded panel is a stack of labelled boxes, in this order: the version row, OSM Import, Development (temporary), Paths, Lane type colours (OpenDRIVE), Selection gizmo colours and Default material colours.
Edit > Preferences > Add-ons with the iCity 2 entry expanded, scrolled so all boxes are visible or captured as one tall image: the version row, OSM Import, Development (temporary), Paths, Lane type colours (OpenDRIVE), Selection gizmo colours, Default material colours.
Three of the colour groups appear a second time inside the add-on itself. Open the account button on the iCity Editor header, choose Preferences in the left nav under APP, and the Appearance screen shows the same selection gizmo, lane and default-material swatches, plus the notification switches that belong to your Parametra account rather than to this machine.
Version and updates
The first row names the installed version, read from the add-on itself. Beside it, the panel says one of three things: nothing yet, Up to date with a tick once a check has run and found nothing, or a red Update to <version> button when a newer release exists.
The top box of the iCity 2 preferences: the Blender icon with the text iCity 2 and the version number at the left, and the Check for Updates button at the right. Capture the state after a successful check, so the Up to date tick is showing.
Check for Updates asks the server now rather than waiting for the next automatic poll. Blender reports Checking for updates... and hands the interface straight back; the answer arrives a moment later. When there is an update, the update card opens every time you press the button, even if you skipped that card earlier. When there is not, the reason is printed and flashed rather than left silent.
The Update <version> button on the iCity Editor header is a different action: it downloads the release and then reads Open folder. The preferences button only asks and shows.
Folders
The Paths box holds the two settings people come here for. They are not the same thing: one is where iCity writes, the other is where iCity only reads.
The Paths box of the iCity 2 preferences with a Library Folder and a Custom Assets Folder both filled in, at least one extra asset folder row present with its X button, the Add Asset Folder button, and the greyed-out Logs: line at the bottom.
Changing the Library Folder never moves anything on its own. When a previous location is recorded and still exists, a Sync button appears beside the field. Pressing it copies the old library into the new folder and then deletes the old one, so the library ends up in exactly one place. The work runs in the background and reports “Syncing the library in the background…”
The Library Folder row of the Paths box immediately after changing the folder, so the Sync button with the refresh icon is showing to the right of the path field.
Sync is a move, not a copy: the old library folder is deleted once the files are across. It runs once, only when you press it, and never automatically.
The last line of the Paths box is not a setting. It is a greyed-out label, so you can find the log folder without hunting for it. It reads one of two things:
Logs: <path> Logs: unavailable (engine binaries missing?)
The second is what you get when the engine binaries cannot be resolved, because the resolver that answers with the log folder is compiled into them. See Troubleshooting.
OSM import and Start
Two switches, one box each. Both are read at the moment the action runs, not at load.
The elevation switch is the only place terrain sampling can be turned on; the OSM import dialog does not offer it. The default graph switch decides only what happens when there is nothing to load: if a saved city state exists in the cache, Start always reloads that city, whatever this setting says.
Colours
Three groups of swatches, each a two-column grid. Every pick applies at once — nothing here waits for a regenerate.
Selection gizmo colours set the base colour of each selection overlay. The hover, selected and active shades are derived from it, so one swatch re-tints the whole family. The panel also notes that this table colours the Data Output cards, so a kind of element keeps one identity everywhere.
There are six swatches and only five reachable modes: the table is keyed on what a gizmo picks, not on which tab you are on, and Blocks mode picks regions rather than block outlines. So the Blocks swatch is the one you never see in this build, and the Regions swatch is the colour Blocks mode actually draws. See Modes & the tool rail.
Default material colours are the flat colours the engine's output wears before a theme dresses it. The panel says it plainly: “The city's colours before a theme dresses it — changing one re-tints the scene immediately.” Changing one re-tints the shared material in place, so the viewport changes while you are picking.
The lower half of the iCity 2 preferences showing the Lane type colours (OpenDRIVE), Selection gizmo colours and Default material colours boxes together, with their captions visible, including the line 'Also colours the Data Output cards.'
Lane type colours (OpenDRIVE) are the lane previewer's defaults per lane type. Driving splits by direction: Driving + is forward and Driving − is backward, the one the Flip toggle selects. A per-lane override set in the card still wins over these. See Lanes and markings.
The same three grids are in the account popup, under Preferences → Appearance, where clicking a swatch opens the colour picker and writes straight back to the preference. The Save preferences button on that screen sends the notification switches to your account; the colours are per-machine and are already live by the time you press it.
The ACCOUNT popup with Preferences selected in the left nav under APP, showing the Appearance heading, the Selection gizmos / Lane type colours / Default materials grids, the Notifications switches below them, and the Save preferences button.
When a change takes effect
Nothing here needs Blender restarted. Where a change reaches depends on who reads the setting.
- —Colours apply immediately. The gizmo colour memo is dropped, the default materials are re-tinted in place, and every 3D view and hosted editor is redrawn.
- —Asset folders drop the library scan cache the moment they change, so the asset lists in the add-on rebuild on their next read.
- —Custom Assets Folder is also written to the engine's own config file (
paths.cfg) so the engine process resolves the same folder. The add-on pushes it again every time the engine starts, so a change made while the engine binaries were unavailable is not lost. - —Library Folder is written to
library.jsonin the same config folder, because the download path resolves the library off the main thread and cannot read a Blender preference there. - —Build Default Graph on Start is read when you press Start, so it takes effect on the next engine start.
- —OSM: sample terrain elevation is read when an import runs.
None of these settings live in your .blend. Your city does not either — it lives in a separate engine process, which is why How iCity fits into Blender is worth reading before you rely on Blender's save.
The Discord is fastest for anything scene-specific. Email suits licensing, billing and anything needing a file attached.
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