Overview

CRYENGINE's Asset Browser provides an overview of your project by allowing you to browse its contents, search for particular assets, as well as import new assets in FBX format.

The goal is to provide users with the freedom to interact with their project's contents on disk solely through the Editor, to the point where a regular File Explorer should no longer be necessary when working on a CRYENGINE project. In the future all asset management functionality will be added to the Asset Browser.

More on the engine's Asset System can be found on Asset System - Generating Metadata.

Asset Browser Overview

Certain default assets that arrive with your CRYENGINE build are separated from your project's assets; these default assets are situated under the Engine folder, while all project assets are stored under Assets.

Opening the Asset Browser

The Asset Browser can be accessed via Tools -> Asset Browser.

1. Menu

Accessed via the icon situated at the top-right corner of the Asset Browser, the Menu contains the following options:

File

Edit

View

Toolbars

Option	Description
Customize	Opens the toolbar customization window allowing users to customize existing toolbars, and/or create new toolbars within the Asset Browser.
Lock Toolbars	When disabled, the positions of toolbars and spacers within the Asset Browser can be changed by drag and drop.
Spacers	The following options allow users to use spacers in positioning their toolbars. Insert Expanding Spacer Adds an expanding spacer to the toolbar layout; an expanding spacer pushes all elements situated at its ends to the edge of the tool window. Insert Fixed Spacer Adds a fixed spacer, which has a fixed size of one icon. The Spacers menu options are only available when Toolbars → Lock Toolbars is disabled.
Toolbars	Lists all default and custom toolbars created for the Asset Browser, allowing users to select which toolbar they'd like to hide or display. By default, the following toolbars are available to the Asset Browser: File Import Opens your system's file explorer to locate and import assets of appropriate file types. Save All Saves unsaved changes made to all modified assets. View Recursive View When enabled, assets included within both the selected folder of the Folder Tree and its sub-folders are displayed in the Search Results pane. Disabling this button on the other hand displays only files included within the selected folder. Hide Irrelevant Folders When enabled, folders containing assets that are not relevant to a specified search criteria/filter are dimmed in the Folder Tree pane, and hidden when View → Shows Details/Shows Thumbnails is active. View Type Show Folder Tree Hides/reveals the Folder Tree pane of the Asset Browser. Split Horizontally Displays asset properties in columns and asset thumbnails, across two horizontal divisions of the Search Results pane. Split Vertically Displays asset properties in columns and asset thumbnails, across two vertical divisions of the Search Results pane. Shows Details Displays multiple asset properties in columns within the Search Results pane. Shows Thumbnails Displays asset thumbnails instead of column-listed details in the Search Results pane.

Help

2. Navigation Bar

Indicates the path of the currently selected folder from the folder tree, also permitting quick switching between previous/successive folders along its path.

3. Folder Tree

Lists a directory of folders and their sub-folders included within your project, allowing for quick navigation between these. The Search Folders bar at its top further helps searching for specific folders/sub-folders on the basis of their names.

Context Menu

Right clicking anywhere within this pane yields a context menu with the following items.

4. Search Results Pane

The contents of folders selected within the Folder Tree, assets retrieved by searches and their corresponding search filters are displayed within this Search Results pane.

Context menus are generated by right-clicking virtually anywhere on the Search Results pane and depending on where these right-clicks occur, the menus may differ in their listed options as follows.

Column Headers Context Menu

With View → Shows Details/Split Horizontally/Split Vertically active, asset listings are displayed in column view within the Search Results pane such that each column header corresponds to specific properties of the displayed assets. Right-clicking on the column headers within this pane allows the inclusion of additional property columns.

Search Results Pane Context Menu

With View → Recursive View inactive, right-clicking on empty space within the Search Results pane without selecting any particular asset yields:

Asset Context Menu

Generated by right-clicking a specific asset within the Search Results pane, its options include:

Version Control Context Menu

With a Version Control System setup, the Folder Tree, Search Result Pane and Asset Context Menus might include additional options:

Functionality

Additional functionality provided by the Asset Browser includes:

Associating Work Files to Assets

Work files are those used in the design and development of an asset. For instance, a material (.mtl) file might have multiple Photoshop Document (.psd) files , TIFF, PNG files and or JPEG reference images as its work files.

The work files associated with any asset in the Asset Browser can be viewed from the Editor, provided these have been linked to the asset from the Asset Browser.

Adding Work Files

To add a work file, right-click an asset within the Asset Browser and select the Work Files → Manage Work Files... option from the context menu. This opens the Manage Work Files window through which work files located within a project's asset directory can be linked to the selected asset.

Manage Work Files

Manage Work Files window

Clicking the Add Files option brings up a file browser to locate and select the desired work files, while clicking Save confirms the selection. The different columns within the Manage Work Files window are as follows.

Viewing Work Files

Once linked, the work files associated with an asset can be viewed/located by right-clicking that asset's listing within the Asset Browser and selecting Work Files.

Work Files

Deleting Work File Associations

To delete an association between an asset and a specific work file, right-click the asset in the Asset Browser and select the Work Files → Manage Work Files... option to open the Manage Work Files window.

Hover over the desired work file with the mouse icon to reveal the icon against its listing, and click the icon to cancel the association between the file and the currently selected asset.

Copying and Duplicating

Pressing Ctrl + C with one or more assets selected within the Asset Browser copies those assets to the clipboard; these copies may be pasted within any folder of the project's Assets directory using Ctrl + V.

Similarly pressing Ctrl + D with one or more assets selected creates duplicates of those assets within the same folder. Alternatively, copies and duplicates of assets can also be made using the Copy and Duplicate options of the context menu generated by right-clicking an asset in the Asset Browser.

Favorites

The Favorites feature gives users the ability to bookmark and add to a list the most commonly used/liked assets. An asset may be added to/removed from the Favorites by toggling the star icon against their listings when View → Shows Details/Split Horizontally/Split Vertically is active.

Star Icons of Assets

Once added to the list of Favorites, the star icon against an asset's listing appears filled-in when Shows Details/Split Horizontally/Split Vertically is active, and at the top-left corner of its thumbnail when Shows Thumbnails/Split Horizontally/Split Vertically is active as illustrated here.

Star Icons of Asset Thumbnails

Either way, an exclusive list of Favorites may be accessed by clicking the star button situated on the left of the Search Assets bar.

List of Favorites

Smart and Advanced Search

The Search Assets bar searches for assets included with the Engine/Assets directories of a project, by checking the entered search string against the Name and Type values of every asset.

It hence yields in its results those assets whose names or types match the entered string.

Filter

The Filter button situated to the right of the Search bar enables users to describe specific criteria by which the Search Results pane must list a project's various assets. Clicking the button yields options to Add Criterion, Clear Criteria and Save/Load custom filters as required.

Manipulating Assets

Assets may be included within a level by simply dragging and dropping them from the Asset Browser's Search Results pane into the Viewport. This allows for the quick placement of mesh and particle type assets, while even permitting material assets to be assigned to existing objects within a level.

In addition to this, assets may be:

Edited

Most assets may be edited by double-clicking upon their respective listings within the Asset Browser's Search Results pane; doing so upon Environment (.env), Material (.mtl), GeometryCache (.cax), Particles (.pfx), CSharpScript (.cs), SchematycEntity (.schematyc_ent) and SchematycLibrary (.schematyc_lib) files brings up the relevant editor tool.

On the other hand, double-clicking a texture (.dds) that has a TIFF source file opens the Texture compiler settings dialog, where settings such as the compression scheme, Mip map generation parameters and normal/alpha map combinations of the TIFF file can be configured.

Deleted

By highlighting an asset's listing and hitting the Delete key. If dependencies exist between the asset and others within your project, a warning prompt will appear.

Moved

A similar prompt appears when an attempt is made to move assets by dragging and dropping their listings to the target folder in the Folder Tree.

Imported

Assets can be imported via the File -> Import option of the Asset Browser, which automatically triggers the following dialog to choose between the asset's various elements that need importing.

Importing Assets dialog

All assets are imported with their default settings, which may be changed later in the relevant Editor as explained previously. Alternatively, dragging and dropping an asset from your system's File Explorer to the destination folder within the Asset Browser automatically imports that asset's comprising elements as well.

Holding Ctrl while doing so will generate the above dialog. Either way, the following table lists all file types supported by the importer.

Tool-specific Asset Browsers and Instant Editing

The Environment Editor, Material Editor and Particle Editor tools have their own Asset Browser panels, which only display assets relevant to them.

These tool-specific Asset Browsers can be added to the windows of the Environment, Material or Particle Editor by selecting the Window → Panels → Asset Browser option from their menu. Once opened, the tool-specific Asset Browser can be docked within the tool window as desired.

Only assets that are relevant to the tool can be created within the tool-specific Asset Browser. Moreover, while the functionality of these tool-specific Asset Browsers is the same as the standalone Asset Browser, they have an additional Sync Selection feature which can be activated by clicking the icon.

Sync Selection in the Material Editor's Asset Browser

When Sync Selection is enabled, selecting an asset in the Asset Browser of the Environment, Material or Particle Editor immediately opens that asset in the Editor. This makes it very easy to cycle through different assets and edit them on the fly.

Live Updates for Asset Resource Selectors

When an object within a level is selected from the Level Explorer or the Viewport, the Properties tool displays a multitude of options by which an object's parameters may be tweaked.

Certain options within this Properties tool allow for custom files (such as that of Mesh, Material or Animation types) to be selected in relation with the asset; this is done by clicking upon the Asset Resource Selector which appears as a folder button against option fields as demonstrated below.

Live Updates

Clicking upon an Asset Resource Selector automatically opens the Select Asset window, which allows for the desired asset files to be located in the format of an Asset Browser dialog. Any changes/selections made via this dialog is automatically applied to the selected object upon the Viewport.

Texture Tool-tips

Given a texture asset's listing within the Search Results pane, hovering the mouse over the texture generates an overview of its basic properties as illustrated below.

Texture Tooltip

Additionally holding CTRL during a mouse hover provides a larger image preview of the texture asset.

Texture Tooltip (Large)