Building the Ultimate Cloud-Based Blender Asset Library

I know this might not be the sexiest writeups on Blender, but it’s one that needs to be written. We’re not going to be using geometry nodes to create a seamless satisfying animation. No. Instead, we’re going to be talking about organizing your Blender asset library.

Just before we jump into my setup, I figured it’d be worth kicking it off with a quick breakdown of the asset library and how it works.

How the Asset Library Works

Blender 3.0 included the long-awaited asset library. A new system designed to make accessing your models, textures, and character poses ultra-convenient. You can find your library by toggling any window to the “asset library”.

This new tool works in two ways.

1. Accessing assets within the current Blend File.
2. Accessing asset libraries defined through your Blender preferences menu.

The trick to using assets across Blend files is marking a model as an asset and then storing that blend file in a folder you’ve marked as an asset library. To mark an asset, just right click on your model through the layer panel and click “mark as asset”

A quick tip before marking your models as an asset, apply all your transformations using CTRL + A. This will give you a much better preview image and ensure everything is orientated correctly when you want to use it.

After you’ve marked something as an asset you can continue to organize things even more granularly through catalogs. And you can nest, and nest, and nest these catalogs.

Before you start using your new asset, I highly recommend also filling in where the model came from and a description about it through the “Asset Details” window. That way if you ever have any questions, you can quickly reference that information.

It’s a pretty slick new feature, but to use it effectively, we need to make sure our assets are organized.

Organizing Your Library

I’m a bit of a weirdo, in the fact that I’m constantly jumping between my two computers. So when considering how to set up the library I opted for a cloud solution. Specifically Google Drive.

To get this to work correctly, you need to use the desktop application. The desktop app gives you access to your drive from your folder explorer.

Before you start organizing assets, let's set up a general 3d asset folder. Within that, I’d recommend creating subfolders for each type of asset. In the screenshot below I’ve broken mine into “Materials”, “Models”, and “HDRIs”.

I also recommend making your asset folder “available for offline access”. It’s going to make grabbing your assets much quicker from within Blender.

If you’ve used the asset library before, you’ll know that when opening a library you’ll often get a delay. To fix this issue, I’ve opted to divide up my entire asset library into sublibraries. That way if I’m looking for a 3d model of a brain, I don’t have to sift through all the different furniture assets I have.

At the time of writing this here is a list of my sublibraries:

• Anatomy
• Architectural
• Buildings
• Clothing
• Electronics
• Food & Drink
• Furniture
• People
• Plants
• Transportation

Each of which is also divided up into subfolders. So for example, if you open up the transportation folder you’ll see folders for “Cars”, “Planes”, etc. These subfolders won’t have any effect on the way our assets are displayed, but they do help me stay sane trying to keep all my Blender files organized.

Once, you’ve got your folders set up, you can begin adding each as a library within Blender. Below is what my setup looks like:

So now that our libraries are loaded, how do we organize things in Blender? That’s where catalogs come back in! And, unfortunately, there isn’t a one size fits all setup that I’ve found effective. Each library has its own organization and to go through each one would be a waste of time! Instead, I’ve gone ahead and included a repo that has each of the libraries broken out for you. Feel free to check it out here: https://github.com/iamkunkel/blenderassetlibrary

After you clone it to your local (or cloud storage), just go into Blender and mark each folder as an asset library. At this point, you’ll be set to start building your collection. Fair warning it gets wildly addicting.

If you take a look at my repo, you’ll notice that each of my asset catalogs matches pretty closely to the folder setup. I’ve found that keeping these consistent makes finding and logging assets much easier.

Without going through each library, that’s the primary setup! You can absolutely add to these folders, or if you download additional libraries just add them through the preferences menu.

Creating Assets

If you have been following along, by now you should have a pretty killer asset library setup, but how do we add to it? It’s honestly really simple:

1. Create a new Blender file.
2. Save within the corrisponding folder.
3. Create your model and mark it as an asset.
4. Within that Blend file, toggle to the corresponding catalog and organize as necessary.

After adding and organizing, don’t forget to add asset details as well!

Another quick tip for you: If you need to edit an asset, just right-click on the thumbnail and you’ll be able to open up the file from the asset library. This will save you from having to navigating through all of the folders within your setup.

So now you’re familiar with how the asset library works, how to organize a library, and how to add to it! And as you start to work on your setup, feel free to experiment and change it up. Find something that makes sense to you. And please comment with any questions or tips that have helped you organize things!