Panel Overview¶
The engon panel is located on the right side of the 3D viewport window. Press the N key on
your keyboard and select the polygoniq
tab to access it.
Can't see the panel
If you do not see the polygoniq panel or missing engon
section inside, make sure that engon
is enabled in Preferences --> Addons
. Make sure you are in Object Mode
; usually, you can
press Tab to switch between modes.
Warning
Most of the operator buttons only work if you are in Object Mode. Usually you can press Tab to switch between modes.
Browse Assets¶
Spawn assets, materials, scenes and others using engon Asset Browser
. To spawn assets you can
either click on Browse Assets
and select an area where the engon Asset Browser
will appear or
select Open engon Asset Browser
button to open a separate window with the
engon Asset Browser
. You can also press E key which serves as a shortcut for Browse Assets
button. and it opens engon Asset Browser
window in the area where the mouse is currently hovering.
engon Asset Browser display methods
Convert Selection¶
Objects in can be in two states. Either linked
or editable
. Linked objects save memory and are
easily updatable. On the other hand editable objects can be customized to your liking. All assets
from asset packs should get nice render results out of the box, thus linked
variant should be used
in most of use cases.
Optimization tip
We have a complete section that describes benefits of using linked assets on the advanced topics page.
Limitations of linked assets
Linked assets are limited in terms of customization. There are only a few attributes that we can feed into shaders. The amount of data will always be limited. We try to choose a commonly used customization and support that even on linked assets. Keep in mind that for bigger changes you will have to convert to editable.
Convert To Linked¶
This button converts selected objects back to their linked
variants. Works only on polygoniq
assets because we know where we can locate the original variant. Doesn't work on particle systems.
Destructive operation
Converting to linked can be destructive. All local modifications to the asset will be
removed (mesh changes, materials changes, animations) and the default engon
asset is going to replace the existing one!
How to update asset
Assets change over time as we add new functionality. In some cases you have asset that has been already spawned with older version and is missing some data necessary for it to work correctly. In this case you can update the asset by converting it to linked and then back to editable. Asset will effectively be respawned with all the data from the current version.
Convert To Editable¶
This button converts selected objects to editable
and makes them local to the scene. This way you
have complete control of the objects, you can change the mesh, textures, materials, apply custom
modifiers, animations, etc. On the flip side, this affects the performance of the scene so use this
function wisely.
Remove Duplicates¶
When this button is active, it automatically merges duplicate materials, node groups and images
into one when the asset is spawned. Saves memory. Read more about Remove Duplicate Data
here.
Transform selection¶
Choose between Snap to Ground
, Random Transform
and Reset Transform
features.
Snap to Ground¶
Snaps selected assets to the nearest object under them.
Snaps selected objects to the ground below. Works on all selected objects including
objects that are not from engon's
asset packs.
Multiple ground objects
Make sure that there is another object under the selected one. If there are multiple objects below then the selected object should be snapped to the uppermost one.
Linked assets & bounding box
Snap to ground works also on linked assets. It is calculated using the bounding box, so make sure that origins are in correct place.
If there is no surface under the vehicle, nothing will happen
Random Transform¶
Each object in the selection will be randomly rotated and scaled with each click. Transform is manipulated only slightly so the object stays semi-vertical.
Quick forest
You can use small amount of trees with randomized transforms to create a illusion of diverse and non-repeating forest quickly.
Reset Transform¶
Each object in the selection will get its rotation set to (0, 0, 0)
and scale to (1, 1, 1)
.
Scatter¶
Scatter all kinds of assets easily in your scene. Go to Scattering Assets to see more.
.blend maintenance tool¶
If you want to remove duplicate data, find missing files or migrate assets from older asset pack
versions make use of .blend maintenance tool.