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YAAM Inception

YAAM is a simple asset manager add-on for Blender 3D. I'm currently working on an open movie project. It's an animated series which is developed in the open, similar to open source software. People can elect to contribute their talent to the project. I'm currently in the Research and Development phase; trying to build the 10K view of the work needed. I decided to make an approximately thirty second animated sequence with multiple shots to work out the kinks from my pipeline. The first hurdle I faced to keep this minor project organized is an asset manager. This is how YAAM was born. Yet Another Asset Manager.

Asset Directory Structure

There is an Asset directory, which gets installed along with the add-on if installed from the .zip file. However, the add-on can be used to manage multiple asset directories. The list of asset directories can be stored in favourites and selected at any point in time.

The asset root directory can be arbitrary named. However all subdirectories must be named as indicated below. As will be highlighted later, YAAM can be used to create the asset directory structure as assets are added. However, if there are already a group of assets available, they can be copied in their corresponding subdirectory.

The Structure

• Top_level_directory
  • 3ds
  • Blend
  • DefIcons
  • Fbx
  • Obj
  • Textures

Each subdirectory contains the corresponding asset category. The top level subdirectories out lined above can have multiple arbitrary subdirectories below it, to further organize the assets

YAAM Modes

YAAM operates in two modes

• Browse
• Manage

Browse

In Browse mode, assets can be browsed and imported into the scene

Manage

In Manage mode, new assets can be created and added via YAAM to the asset directory specified above.

Graphical User Interface