Hi everybody. The Blender Asset Browser is a new feature
in Blender 3.0. It allows you to quickly browse your own libraries
for saved objects, materials, poses and much more. And then you simply drag and drop assets into
your scene. This is a really big addition that many have
wanted for a long time and that other 3D programs include. It’s not an add-on, it’s actually being
built into Blender and it’s free. I’ll show you step-by-step how to get the
asset browser, set up your asset library and import assets into your scene really fast. The asset browser went through a lot of changes
as it was developed in the Alpha version, so if you’ve seen an earlier tutorial it’s
probably already out of date. The asset browser is now available in the
Beta version of Blender 3.0. The full release is scheduled for December
2021. By the way, I realize I’m going to say “asset”
about a hundred times in this video. Assets can include objects, materials, poses,
images and I believe much more to come. However, I’m going to focus on objects and
materials for this tutorial. To use the Asset Browser, you need to have
Blender 3.0. Go to Blender.org/download. If you’re watching this video after the
full release, just download version 3.0. If not, click on the tab that says “Builds”
and look for Blender 3.0 Beta under whichever operating system you use. Download and install it. Make sure you open the 3.0 version of Blender
if you still have an older version. It’s important to note that the asset browser
is just that, a browser and not a true library. It doesn’t store assets, it simply points
Blender to a location where it can find the asset. It then pulls assets from other .Blend files
stored on your computer. So you’ll have to designate a folder, or
multiple folders, on your computer to tell Blender where to look for assets you want
available in the browser. If you’ve already got a well-organized folder
system for your assets, that is awesome! If not, you should create a single file folder
where you’ll store Blend files containing all of your assets. It can contain sub-folders that’s fine,
but nothing will appear in the browser that’s not inside the designated, over-arching folder. To do this, go to preferences and under “File
Path,” find the section titled “Asset Libraries.” Here, you can add one or multiple libraries. If you already have a folder set up, you can
choose that one. Or you can create a new one. Or you can use the default folder that Blender
creates. Just make note of where it is saved on your
computer. Give your library a name and select the file
path to the folder containing your assets. For this example, I’ve created a folder
called “Asset Browser Test.” Save your preferences. I’ll navigate to the Asset Browser Test
folder on my computer and I will add a Blend file containing some human models I bought
from Blender Market. I’ll open the file in Blender 3.0. Now, two things have to happen for these models
to be available inside the asset browser. They need to be saved in a Blend file inside
a designated asset folder. We just did that part. Secondly, they need to be “marked as an
asset.” They’re not automatically available in the
browser just because they are in the folder. This is because you might have many objects,
materials or other assets in a Blender file but only want some of them to show up in the
asset browser. Select one or more objects in your Blend file. Go to the outliner and right click one of
the selected models. Select “Mark as asset.” You can mark multiple assets at the same time
and you don’t have to individually click each one. A side-note: If an object is already marked
as an asset, this option will be greyed out. If you want to remove an object from the browser,
you can select “Clear asset” here. When an object is marked as an asset, you
see a new logo appear next to the object in the outliner showing it is a marked asset. I’ll show you how this works with materials
too. I’ll create a cube and then I’ll add a
new material to it. To add the material to the asset browser,
right-click the material in the material properties panel, and “mark as asset” is an available
option. We will stay in this file and take a look
at the asset browser itself. The asset browser comes in the form of a new
editor screen. We’ll move this timeline editor up in the
workspace. In the top left where you select your editors,
you’ll notice a new option called “Asset browser.” Let’s go over the new editor. In the middle, you see the assets we marked
are displayed. Blender creates really convenient preview
images. Later, I’ll show you how to change these
preview images if you want. On the left we have an area where we can navigate
through our assets. We toggle the visibility of this with “T”. “N” toggles the right sidebar on and off. This is where you can view and change data
for selected assets. Back to the left side. This top drop down box allows you to choose
from different libraries. It defaults to “Current File” and this
will show only assets marked in the file you are currently using. It shows the three models and the one material,
which we marked as assets in this file. Clicking the drop-down box will show you whatever
other library folders you have chosen in the file path preferences that we looked at earlier. This is showing a few other libraries I’ve
set up as well as the “Asset Browser Test” folder I just made. The assets from this file also show up here
because the current file is stored inside the “Asset Browser Test” folder on my
computer. Let’s talk about organizing assets. The asset browser gives you a lot of flexibility
in organizing how your assets display inside the browser, regardless of which Blend files
store which assets. You may have dozens or more Blend files with
objects and materials you want available, but they’re all able to be organized however
you want inside the browser. Below the drop down box on the left is an
area that displays what are called “catalogs.” Within a selected library, you can have many
“catalogs.” The two default catalogs are “all” and
“unassigned.” Both are probably self-explanatory. Next to “all” there is a plus sign. Clicking this will create a new catalog. We can double click this and name it “People.” The asterisk next to the catalog tells us
the file hasn’t been saved since we created it and closing without saving will lose the
catalog. We can then go to either the “all” or
the “unassigned” catalogs and drag the people assets into the people catalog. We see they no longer display in the “unassigned”
catalog because they’ve now been assigned to the people catalog. We can click the plus sign next to the people
catalog to create a sub catalog and call it “males.” We can then drag all the male models into
the male catalog. Sub-catalogs work a little differently than
traditional sub-folders. They’re really more like filters than they
are folders. Selecting “people” will show us all of
the people models regardless of which sub-catalog they’re in. But selecting “males” will narrow it down
to only the male models. The arrow next to the catalogs will collapse
and expand the sub catalogs. Right clicking a catalog gives you some options,
including to delete the catalog. You can drag catalogs into other catalogs. It’s pretty easy to use and really versatile. We’ll press the plus sign next to “all”
again and create a new catalog for materials. Let’s drag the marked material asset into
the materials catalog. Remember to save the file to save your catalogs. If the Blend file has already been saved,
you can also press this save icon next to the “all” catalog to save them all. I’ve got more but if you’ve made it this
far, consider giving the video a like because it really helps me out with the Youtube algorithm. Ok. Something really important to understand about
the asset browser is that you can only move assets around in catalogs and change their
metadata when you’re inside the original Blend file. Part of that metadata is the preview image. When I bought these models, they actually
each came with individual preview images. Press “N” to toggle the details tab on
the right. It shows the preview image of the selected
model. Clicking the folder icon next to it will let
us navigate to whatever stored image we want to use as a preview image. Also over here you can rename the asset, you
can add a description and author and we can add tags which I assume will help find assets
in a very large library using this search bar up on top. Remember, you can only change this data and
move assets to catalogs when you’re in the “current file” meaning when you are actually
in the Blend file where the objects are stored. Now that we have a few objects in the browser,
let’s see how to pull objects from the browser into a new scene. We’ll close this file and open a brand new
scene in Blender 3.0. We’ll add a plane just so we have a surface
to place objects onto. Expand a window and open the asset browser
editor. No assets display. That’s because it defaults to the “current
file” library. Remember the current file refers to the file
that you have open right now. And this file doesn’t have any marked assets. When we change from “current file” to
the “asset test library” that we set up earlier, we see our assets displayed. And now, the best part! Drag one of the models from the asset library
over the plane. It projects a little grid to show you where
it’s going to land. Drop the model onto the plane and it snaps
to it. So what just happened when we did this? To Blender, this preview image represents
a specific object inside of a specific Blend file inside of a specific folder on my computer. With one drag, we told Blender to go to that
file, append the object and place it where we just dragged our cursor to. It’s not the most complicated thing in the
world, but it’s a very powerful tool now inside of Blender that doesn’t take up a
ton of extra storage. Now we can just keep eep dragging and dropping
assets as much as we want. Simply drag the material onto the cube and
it applies it. This was a game changer for me! One more important thing. Top and center of the asset browser is another
drop down box which determines how we input the asset into our scene. There are now three options. There used to only be two. The default is “append (reuse data).” This appends the object from the original
file but if we drag the same object into the scene multiple times, they will share data
with each other. Editing one of these objects will edit all
instances of the object in this scene. Don’t worry, editing an object here does
NOT affect it in the original file location. I tested that to make sure. This is generally, probably the best way to
import assets because it saves on the amount of data being stored. It’s especially good if you’re going to
have tons of the same object all over your scene. But let’s say we want to bring this model
into the scene twice but then we want to edit one of the objects without affecting the other. Well, we can change the import option to “append”
and it’ll bring in another instance of the object with its own, independent set of data. Now we can change this object without it affecting
the other objects in the scene. The third option is “link” but when you
link an object into your scene you can’t change it or even move it. It has to be changed and moved in the original
file location which to me seems pretty useless for most cases. So that’s most of what there is to know
about the asset library. Let me just show you one of the libraries
I’ve been putting together. I’ve got a couple hundred objects in it,
dozens of materials and I’ve created a lot of catalogs to organize them. I do notice it lags a little when I’m in
a catalog with lots of assets but it’s not that bad. The search function works really well and
I’ve been really happy with it overall. It does take some time to get all your assets
organized and available in the browser but I think the time is a good investment. You have a lot of control over how you organize
things. I might consider breaking the larger library
into some smaller ones but we’ll see. Now remember Blender 3.0 is still in Beta
testing so there are definitely bugs that probably still need to be worked out so be
careful to save your work regularly when using the Beta version. It’s also possible the developers might
make further changes to how the browser looks or functions before it’s official release. My name is Brandon and I’m just a guy who
likes to use Blender. I would love to have you as a subscriber to
my channel or a follower on my Instagram. I’ve got a website too at BrandonsDrawings.com. If nothing else, giving the video a like would
be hugely appreciated. Or leave a comment to let me know what you
thought of the video. Thank you so much for watching. I hope this helped. The asset browser is super exciting. Have fun with it and stay creative!
