Creating Assets From Directory

This feature is ONLY to be used when you have other .blend files (historical) that you wish to take data from (Objects, Materials, Worlds etc.) and convert them into Assets to be accessible from any new instance of Blender via the "asset browser".

Initial settings

Catalog

This dropdown option will allow you to put the chosen .blends into a new or existing catalog.

Save as a Single Blend file

This will merge all the selected .blends into a single one (good for bunching similar assets into one .blend.

Filters

This will enable the options below. Disable if you wish to make everything compatible to be marked in the chosen .blend files.

Filters

What to save

Choose between everything in the file, data that is NOT already marked as an asset, or just ALREADY marked assets.

Objects

This will open up options for all object types.

Thumbnail shading

Choose the type of thumbnail rendering you wish to have between Solid (grey unlit); Material (unlit material preview); Eevee (lit Eevee render); or Cycles (Path traced lit). Choosing between Material, Eevee, and Cycles will provide you with camera options and the option to add a white ground plane. If the ground plane is not chosen, the image will be rendered with a transparent background.

Thumbnail Rendering
‍Please be aware that different render engines may increase the process time. Eevee may not always be the fastest. Cycles can be quicker in come cases.

Object Data types

Selecting the following will bring them in to be marked as an asset. (Read below for Kitbash options)

Clear materials

This has caused some confusion in the past where users thought this clears the materials from the object, but this is different from what it does. It only removes their asset data, so they don’t appear in the object section of the True-Asset library.

Move Origin to Bottom

Enabling this option will identify the lowest face of the object based on its average data and set that point as the origin point.

Materials

Selecting this will allow materials to be brought in as their asset type (THIS DOES NOT MEAN THE MATERIALS ALREADY ON OBJECTS):

Minimum Nodes

True-Assets tries to avoid materials that it thinks are not important, like default materials and materials with less than a specified number of nodes. You can set this number using this field.

Node Groups

Currently, only Shader node groups are supported(though you can save Geometry Node groups by using right-click>’ Mark as Asset’ in the geometry node editor). The thumbnails for Node Groups are rendered using a Shader ball. You can choose the render engine you want to use for thumbnails since some nodes (like bevel) only work in Cycles.

Worlds

This will bring in any "world" data that was in the source file

Kitbash Options

Kitbash Assets

This function was built to enable easy and fast asset marking for kitbash content from KB3D.

Join

This will take all the "parented" or "collections", which are individual parts of a larger 'piece' and join them together, so they are one singular object. This will stop all the broken parts being imported, which will not come in at their original orientation, meaning you will have to rebuild the larger sets manually.

Collection

This will, instead of joining the parts, make them collections (similar to how the KB3D file is set up). Collections cannot be edited once dragged into a scene unless you uncheck the "instance" checkmark in the lower left of the 3d viewport.

Apply rotation

This will apply the orientation of the content in the source file so that when you save it, it will be the right way up. (We advise keeping this checked)

Clear parent

This will clear the parent empties and delete them upon importing. (We advise keeping this checked)  

Change displacement type

This will swap the displacement type from "Displacement" to "bump" this fixes the issues of the mesh edges not lining up. (We advise keeping this checked)

Remove Subsurf Modifiers

This will remove any subsurf modifiers applied by KB3D when importing from the source file. This will speed up the process and also make your viewport more performant when using the assets, as the default value enabled by KB3D adds a lot of unnecessary geometry. (We advise keeping this checked)  

Data management options

Pack External Data: Pack all the image textures and other data. This helps if you plan to move the source files and their data later, which can break texture paths.

Force Regenerate Previews: Some assets can already have custom previews attached to them, so if you don’t want the addon to override them, keep this unchecked.

What to do for existing files
‍These are options for managing potential duplicate data. SKIP will ignore anything that has the same data as assets already in your library; OVERRIDE will overwrite the content already in your asset library if any data matches the new import; CREATE NEW will rename the data to ensure no loss of data or failed imports due to matching data already in your library.