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@DeBullVader DeBullVader released this 15 Feb 19:48
· 31 commits to main since this release
v0.3.2
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v0.3.2 Hotfix

  • Reverted a change in 0.3.1 that caused uploading placeholders to not work propertly

v0.3.1 Hotfix

  • Renamed Tool panel to Creator Tools Panel
  • Renamed Asset Library to Asset Manager
  • Added a text to main panel indicating where to find the asset library
  • Added a status text when dragging and dropping a placeholder

v0.3.0

Release notes

Blender 4.0 support

  • This add-on is now also supported in blender 4.0
  • Minimum requirement is changed from 3.5 to 3.6

Asset Library Preview/Original system

  • The Asset Library has had a major overhaul. All assets now have a preview version. A preview version is an empty version of the actual asset type. It has all the same metadata and a thumbnail ( preview) of the original asset with a cloud icon indicating its a preview asset. Because Preview assets are Empty versions of the same asset type the maximum size is about 200kb. This makes downloading the library fast and keeps the disk space required low. Users can then choose what assets they need and download the original version.
    This process is called Sync Assets.

Sync assets does 4 tasks in order.

  1. Gets the current asset list from the server.
  2. Compares the local assets to the server assets and determines if assets are missing or have been updated.
  3. Checks for local assets that have had a name change or are no longer supported.
  4. Syncs the assets according to what it found during the previous steps. This behavior depends on the settings in the add-on settings.
  • Preview assets have the tag Placeholder and Original assets have the tag Original allowing the user to filter between them
  • Both preview and original assets have a blender version tag included indicating in what version of blender the asset is created. For example Geometry node assets created in blender 4.0 are not always backwards compatible to blender 3.6

Drag and drop support
When a preview asset is dragged in the scene it will download the original asset and replace the placeholder with the original.
This functionality is still in development. If it seems to not download, closing and opening blender should resolve the issue. More improvements for this are planned.

UI

We added a new method of showing progression for syncing, download and uploading assets. Per asset status will now be shown in the 3d viewport when an asset is synced, downloaded or uploaded. In addition a overall progress bar is still present on the Asset Browser title bar.

  • Add-on preferences have been updated. it now includes 4 tabs.
    Info
    This is the default tab and holds all social media links.

Documentation and Quick Start

  • For each section and function in our add-on documentation is created on gitbook. Links to the specific functions or topics are found throughout the add-on and are indicated with a ? symbol. Most sections have images included. You can find the documentation with this link
    Blender Universe Documentation

  • This tab also has a section called Troubleshooting with information about how to troubleshoot when something goes wrong.
    We have developed a system that logs information such as Errors and Syncing,downloading assets. They are stored in a file called error_log.txt
    The folder where the log is stored can be opened from the troubleshooting section. In future updated we will be developing a link to our ticket system on discord so that any issue can be send directly to our team.

Add-on Updater
This tab now holds the add-on updater.

Add-on Settings
All add-on settings can be found here as well as in the n-panel

Our Main panel has been updated.

  • Reorganization of all child panels.
  • Some panels have been renamed to better reflect the function of the panel.
  • All 4 tabs that are available in the add-on preferences are also available in our Main panel.
  • Tools panel has been added.
  • Preview render scene has been added.
  • Library manager tool has been added.
  • Material tools have been added to Material properties

New Functionality

Preview render scene
We added the option for users to append our preview render scene to their file. This is the render scene used by the library manager to produce previews. Users can make custom preview renders with this scene if needed. We added a Remove button that removes the scene after appending and cleans up after itself.

Library manager
With this tool users are able to quickly mark assets from the scene to the current file asset library.
This tool has 3 tabs.

Asset properties:
Allows the user to Choose the type of asset and Mark it as asset for the Asset Library
Users are able to quickly select and isolate assets from this tab as well as change the name of an asset.

Render Previews

  • Allows the user to render previews of the asset creating both the original preview as the placeholder preview. This currently happens in a background process but will be updated to allow batch rendering, different light setups and an in general different approach to how they are rendered to render it fast.
  • In its current state users are able to toggle the background and logo on or off. Without a background a shadow-catcher will be used
  • In some cases a different camera angle is needed so we added an option to spawn in the Preview camera and change its Transforms.
  • We also added the option to adjust the assets transform if the default transform is wrong.
  • After the render is done previews will automatically be assigned to the asset. Material node-group previews however need to be assigned by hand after render. This will be supported in the future after the render mechanics have been updated to a better solution.

Asset Metadata

  • Allows the user to quickly add metadata to marked assets. Including: Description, Author name and tags
  • The Author name can be set globally in the add-on settings. This will set all assets to the global Author name.

Upload to BU Asset Library

If you want to contribute to our free core library we very much appreciate it!

  • In the current file section of the Asset browser we added a button that uploads selected assets to our server.
  • Our catalog file can be downloaded so that users have a base to work from and will be included in the upload. If users wants to have a new catalog entry for their asset that not yet in the catalog file they can simply create it. We will consider if its correct and add it to our library.
  • When the user uploads an asset it will automatically generate a preview version of the asset and include it in the upload.
    For any questions about uploading contact us on discord!

Material Tools

We added two new features for materials

  1. Set Active Material
    Sets the selected material as active on the object. Allowing users to quickly preview different materials without having to assign them to the faces.

  2. Texture to Material
    Select Textures exported from substance and it will automatically append a new material to the object with the textures linked correctly.
    Currently only textures with the default naming convention of substance painter are supported Example: Chair_BaseColor.png

Premium base

This update already holds nearly all functionality to support our premium version. The last adjustment for premium will be our main focus after this update. This will also include an increase in new assets for the Free Core Library.

What's Changed

New Contributors

Full Changelog: v0.1.4...v0.3.0

Contributors

DeBullVader
Assets 3
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