Adding Assets from Blender

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Our integration allows you to save different types of assets from Blender to Connecter and render a custom preview for them.

The options are available from the context menu that you can get by right-clicking in the viewport or the Outliner. Some of them require the selection of an asset or the presence of materials. You can do the following:

• Add Collection – from the Outliner – all assets from the selected Collection will be saved as a .blend file and added into a folder of your choice. You can specify the asset's name and quick-filter the object types that will be included.

• Add Current File – from the viewport – similar to Collection, but saves all assets included in the current file. You can look at it as an advanced "Save as" option, as it allows you to create a custom preview for your current project and filter object types.

• Add Selected Objects – from the viewport – requires the selection of at least one asset (object, camera, light, etc). If you have selected multiple assets, you can choose to save them in one .blend file or in a separate one. In the latter case, the object name will be used for the file name.

• Add Materials from Selection – from the viewport and Outliner - requires at least one selected asset with a material. If there are multiple materials, you can choose to save them in one asset or in a separate one. In the former case, each material will have its own preview, which will be assigned to the asset and will form a gallery that you can explore in Connecter. The materials are showcased on a sphere.

You have three options for creating custom previews – Cycles, EEVEE, and Disabled. The latter won't create a custom preview. 

There’s a “Use current view” option below the rendering engines dropdown. It allows you to save the preview using the current viewpoint towards the object. Keep in mind that this option is in Beta and goes through the rendering studio, so the results won’t be exactly the same as the one you see on the screen. We recommend adjusting the studio files as explained in the paragraph below.

The preview-generation settings are adjustable from the Cycles.blend and Eevee.blend files that you will find in the “Thumbnails” folder of your integration. You can edit the settings (for example, camera angle) and overwrite the file. The next time you add an asset to Connecter, the new settings will be used.