Spawning Assets

All assets can be spawned via engon Asset Browser. It also contains search and advanced filtering options and the whole window can be customized.

Watch how to spawn assets

engon Asset Browser

Displays filtered assets in a square grid view. Assets can be spawned by clicking the buttons with their names.

Keyboard shortcut to open engon Asset Browser is E

Press the E to toggle browser in the are under the browser. Keyboard shortcut can be changed in engon preference (Preferences -> Add-ons -> Object: engon -> Keymaps -> Toggle Area)

engon Asset Browser display methods

You can open engon Asset Browser in different ways. You can either open it in a selected zone, in a separate window or with a forementioned shortcut.

engon asset browser overrides preferences

We use the Blender preferences view and draw the browser interface over it because of technical reasons. The engon browser layout is dependent on the preferences layout and expects you to be in the Addons section. If other section is shown, the asset view will be duplicated several times, you can fix this by clicking Fix engon Browser Layout button.

If you open Preferences area in the same window where engon Asset Browser is open, the Preferences area used by engon browser. In order to get back preferences, you need to close the browser.

You can always go back to the preferences view by clicking the red X button in the browser or the N-panel.

Clicking on image preview doesn't spawn asset

To spawn assets, you have to click on the asset name.

Why not built-in Blender Asset Browser

We were extensively looking into this option but built-in Blender Asset Browser doesn't allow developers to customize spawning and we would need to remove some of our features. Having custom asset browser also allows us to have more powerful asset filtering options. If you don't mind losing those features we natively support Blender Asset Browser. Read more here.

Asset Selection

To select an asset in the browser, you can hold down Ctrl and click on the asset's name. This will open a side column with a list of all selected assets. You can then add additional assets to the selection one-by-one by holding down Ctrl and clicking, or you can add a range of assets by holding down Shift and clicking on the last asset in the range.

You are then able to use operators on the top of the side column to perform actions on the selection, such as spawning, creating a scatter system, or starting clicker mode with the selected assets.

Asset Types

engon supports spawning several asset types. Each type spawns differently when clicking the asset name button:

• Model asset is spawned at the cursor location
• Geometry Nodes are added to all applicable selected objects in the scene. If no applicable objects are selected, a new object with the geometry nodes modifiers is spawned at the cursor location
• Material asset is added to all applicable selected objects in the scene. If no applicable objects are selected, a new UV sphere with that material is spawned
• Particle System asset is applied to all applicable selected objects in the scene. If no applicable objects are selected, a new plane with that particle system is spawned
• Scene asset loads a new scene and opens it
• World asset loads a new world shader and sets it as current world

Curve-based geometry nodes can only be added to curve objects, materials can only be added to mesh objects, etc.

More options for spawning assets are described in the Asset Menu chapter.

Spawn materials to selected faces

Spawning materials in edit mode applies them to selected faces (only if the edited object already has at least one material).

Search Bar

Search assets by name, category, asset type (model, material, etc.) or even string parameters. Browser will show assets that contain at least one of the keywords separated by spaces, commas, dashes or underscores. The browser will sort assets by relevancy based on your prompt

Search history

Return back to your previous search in two clicks.

Multiple filters

The category and the seasonal filter are still active next to search filter. If you search for tree that was already filtered by other filters it won't show up. For example if you search for maple in the tropical category there will be no matching assets.

Exact match keywords

Wrap the searched string into quotes "tree" and only assets containing tree keyword will be found - e. g. sTREEt or TREEs won't be considered. Note that search also searches through parameters in addition of the names. It is possible to combine exact match keywords with regular keywords in search queries.

Multiple keywords

Search queries can take multiple words split by a space for more complex queries. You can use search query winter tree coniferous and all assets containing winter, tree or coniferous will be displayed. Assets with more matched keywords will naturally appear higher.

Category Navigation Buttons

Navigate through Asset Packs and their categories. Select a category by clicking on its name or expand the subcategories by clicking the triangle arrow button.

Asset Type Filters

Chooses asset types to be displayed, options are objects, materials, particle systems, scenes,worlds and geometry nodes.

Advanced Filters

Filters based on more advanced properties, each asset type contains different properties. For example browser can display only materials that contain displacement or objects that are higher than 3 meters or specific genus or species, year of manufacture.

Map Filter

Certain assets contain location data. You can use the map filter to interactively filter these assets based on their geographical information. The map filter only shows when the filter panel is wide enough.

Drag-selection works only in vertical direction

Drag-selection of map tiles in the map filter works only in vertical direction. Selecting multiple tiles horizontally is not supported due to limitations of Blender itself.

Asset Menu

A dropdown with additional features is available next to the spawn button of each asset. These features are enabled based on context - type of the asset, selected objects, etc.

Replace Selected

Use the Replace Selected on selected objects to replace them with another object from the engon browser.

Select in Browser

Add asset to selection, see Asset Selection for more information.

Spawn Model Into Particle System

If the active object has a particle system with an instance collection, engon browser will detect this and display a button with particle system icon, that you can click and the model asset will be added directly to the active particle system.

Replace Active Materials

Replaces active materials of selected objects with the spawned material for all objects using them.

Draw Geometry Nodes Asset

Drawable assets are tagged with Drawable tag. These assets can be drawn using curves from the asset menu by clicking Draw Geometry Nodes. You can then adjust your drawn curves or exit the draw mode.

Info

In case you activate Draw mode from engon browser in a separate window, closing the window will also exit the Draw mode.

Asset Detail

Each asset contains metadata with further information about itself - tags, categorization, data count, geometry statistics and other useful information. This information can be displayed by clicking the Show Asset Detail button.

Asset Spawn Options

This menu allows you to change how the asset is going to be spawned, specify certain options like setting texture resolution for materialiq materials, spawning the asset editable and editing particle system values before spawning the system.

Sort Mode

Sort assets by relevancy, alphabetically from A to Z or Z to A, with a single click. Assets are sorted alphabetically by default, once you search something, it switches to relevancy sorting.

How relevancy sorting works

Relevancy sorting compares searched keywords with asset keywords such as title, category, data type or different string parameters. Depending on the amount of matching keywords and also how well individual searched keyword matches the asset keyword (E.g. full word match or only prefix), each asset is assigned a relevancy score. The assets are then ordered by this score.

Preview Scale

Set number of assets shown in the browser. By manipulating the scale you control the size and number of previews shown in the browser.

Preferences

Customizes engon Asset Browser window. Settings can be toggled by clicking on button in the top-right corner. You can set Search History Count, change visual style of navigation or Enable Debug where you can reload previews in case they don't display correctly.