Asset Library - Easy asset organization & management [OLD]

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#1

This is the older post of the same plugin and I highly recommend you go check out the newer one right here: Asset Browser - Quick & Easy Asset Management

Organizing large places asset-wise isn’t always very easy. Especially when you’re meant to do renovation work. Replacing old assets with new ones around places can get really tedious. Sometimes it can get hard to just find the item you’re looking for in your workspace, wether it’s a car, a sound, a particle effect or anything else. So I wanted to fix these issues. And so I decided to create a Asset Library plugin.

Here is a quick look into the user interface:

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The UI was heavily inspired by other game engines, such as Unreal Engine or Unity.

So what exactly can you do with it?

Well the first thing that comes to mind is of course organize and manage your assets in a streamlined and clean way. The plugin’s interface is designed to feel intuitive and easy to navigate, while still keeping all the features behind a few clicks.

Then there are the additional features that come with it. Here is a quick preview of one of them:

https://i.gyazo.com/e92ec9325934e5e5de07a4d8cafd0848.mp4

This is the replace feature. You can use this to replace assets in the explorer with assets inside your library. You can also replace the assets inside your library with ones from the explorer. It has options to do singular objects or all assets that apply to one of the two options: “By name” or “By asset id”. Asset id means a random generated number that is given to every asset you insert into the library as an attribute. This can be used to indetify similar assets within workspace.

Important notice: This plugin uses the Pivot Editor beta feature. It does seem to work without it, but if you want it to work exactly as intended, I recommend turing the beta feature on from File > Beta Features > Pivot Editor

And since the plugin uses a physical folder based setup, you can of course set your own directory for it as well. After insallation, the plugin will do its magic by itself and will insert a new folder inside the explorer. The UI will also be automatically enabled upon opening a place file. If you close the UI and want to reopen it, you can do that by right clicking any empty space within studio and checking the “Asset Library” section.

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This is the default directory for the plugin. You can add, delete and edit assets through here as well. If you wish to change the directory of the plugin, simply select anything in the workspace that you’d like to set as the directory and click “Set new directory”.

The rest of the features are all very straight forward and can be seen in the UI when they are presented to you.

I began developing this yesterday and got it finished earlier today, so there are bound to be some bugs. If you do find any bugs or just want to give feedback, please leave a comment on this post. I will be sure to read all of them as long as I have time.

You can find my other plugins here:

Thank you! : )
-Sol

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#2

Looks great! One question, what are the benefits of using this rather than using Roblox’s Asset Manager, which has a similar purpose?

1 Like
#3

Very nice, I believe I will definitely be using this since I have to make a VERY big project with tons of assets. Though most of it is shown, I am unclear as if the library has model capabilities and how the replace system works exactly?

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#4

I thought about talking about this within the post itself, but I decided to leave it out. Guess I’ll explain it here then:

The way I see it, the asset manager is more of a way to bring a lot of assets into the game from your computer. And while it does have some tools and features for organization, it’s still very limited in that department. Not only that, it only supports certain instance types like MeshParts and Sounds. It doesn’t take in account all the other possible needs there might be for an easy-access library of UI elements per se. Or maybe you want a collection of particle effects or anything similar to that. Then there are of course some featires it lacks, such as a quick way to switch between different assets and whatnot.

The general purpose is not to rival with the asset manager, instead work together with it. They both serve very different purposes in my eyes.

I hope this answered your question!

1 Like
#5

Yes, I can see many use cases with this plugin you’ve made. Just wanted to make my question cleared.

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#6

Models are indeed supported. In fact, every instance type is.

And basically, the replace feature allows you to replace assets inside the explorer with a few different options. Here’s a look inside the different options:

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  • Selection with assets replaces the current selection(s) with the asset inside the library.

  • Asset with selection replaces the asset inside the library with your selection.

  • All with asset replaces all assets within workspace. You have two options for this: Either go by name, which replaces every asset that has the same name with the one in the library. Or you can do by asset id, which is a more safer option and will instead scan through all the asset ids of every workspace object. And if the asset id is the same as the one in the library, it replaces that object with the one in the library. It might be a little confusing when read through text, but it should become fairly clear if you play around with it for a while.

Also one thing to note is that when you replace something you’re given options depending on if the object you’re replaceing and if the asset you’re replacing with are either models or baseparts. Here are the options:

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  • Copy scale means it resizes the object with scale.

  • Copy size means it copies the replaced asset’s vector3 size and puts it onto the new asset. This only works if the asset you’re replacing with is a base part.

  • Then there’s ignrore, which simply doesn’t do any resizing at all.

I hope that covered your question. Let me know if something was left unclear.

1 Like
#7

Update #1

I’ve made some updates previously but they were mostly smaller quality of life improvements rather than notable features or changes so I decided not to make separate posts for them.

Changed the way directories are handled. Instead of using an object value to determine the directory for the assets you can now just select anything in the workspace and click “Set new directory”. The plugin will then load all the assets within that item.

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While the object value worked fine, it felt a bit slow and clunky to use if you had multiplie content folders within your place. So switching between them should be a little bit more easier now.

#8

This is great, thank you. I’ll be using this for new projects.

1 Like
#9

Ooooh! You can store animations too? I will be Definitely using this!

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#10

A quick report on what I’m planning to do for this plugin:

I am currently working on a pretty big update for this plugin, which will include a name change from Asset Library to Asset Browser. This is due to how the plugin will might eventually function. Instead of manually adding assets to the library, it will automatically add and sort everything for you. You will of course be able to add assets manually like now. I’m still on the research phase of this but just know that this is a possible feature update. Let me know what you think of this.

Thank you!

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