[RELEASED]: AssetBrowser
Hi everyone! AssetBrowser started as a way of helping me organize the assets in my projects, and has evolved to become a critical QoL feature for my time working in Unity. AssetBrowser has completely replaced the Project window for me in any design-time work I do, and if you’re an ‘asset hoarder’ like me then maybe it can for you too :).
[Bonus update: v1.0.3 just released which adds, among other things, the ability to customize the images for Prefab previews in AssetBrowser; do prefabs show up as too dark in the Project window for you? (… or black? or pink? or with the wrong background color?) You control the lighting, background, angle, and even FoV of prefab images in AssetBrowser]
You can find AssetBrowser on the Asset Store here: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/assetbrowser-185743
(Assets not included; they’re from the very cool 3D Models Prop RPG 100 Set Pack by Layer Lab)
Highlights from the AssetBrowser store page:
Stop worrying about how to organize your Project files and start using the Tag-based Asset Browser!
Asset Browser is an extension for the Unity Editor which allows to you group your assets in a more intuitive and extensible fashion than the traditional file-folder based structure.
- Tags: Asset Browser is built from the ground up around a new tag-based approach to organizing your assets. With file folders you have to decide whether to put that Elven Sword asset in the “swords” folder or in the “Elven weapons” folder. With tags, just put it in both!
- Drag and drop (in): Drag and drop makes it effortless to bring your assets into the Asset Browser and then organize them within it.
- Drag and drop (out): Drag and drop from the AssetBrowser onto your scene to add, or double click to edit prefab (just like the Project window)
- Find just the right asset: Asset Browser adds search, filter, and sort capabilities to tags to get you to the asset you’re looking for as quickly as possible
- Easily access favorite assets / temporary asset holders: Create tags to keep track of your favorite assets, or just as temporary place to hold assets while you’re editing a scene.
- Contextual assets: Create and easily switch between Tag Collections that are specific to what you’re working on; populating a dungeon? Use your Dungeon Tag Collection to just see those assets. Then, switch just as easily over to your Elven city or Overworld Tag Collection!
- Customize Prefab images: (New with v1.0.3!) Are your Prefabs too dark or too light (or black, or pink) in the Project window? Not with AssetBrowser! Customize the intensity and even the color of the lighting used to generate previews. Are you editing a scene with strong orange lighting and you’d like to see all of your Prefabs with orange lighting to see how they’ll look? Just go into Settings | Experimental | Customize Prefab images, and change it. You can also change the color of the background, the rotation of objects in the previews, and the field of view.
- Clean and focused: Asset Browser is optimized to remove the noise and let you focus on the assets you want. Filter out other assets types with just a click.
- 2D and 3D: Asset Browser works out of the box with both 2D (sprites) and 3D (prefabs) games. Easily toggle other asset types, or enable any asset type to be dragged into the Asset Browser.
- Extensible: With one line of code you can attribute your objects so that AssetBrowser recognizes them.
- Extensible…er: Easily add custom actions that can be performed on assets with a simple click.
- Extensible…est!: Easily extend the asset renderer to add overlays to quickly see which assets meet criteria that matter to you.
- Themed: Works great with both light and dark themes
The AssetBrowser screenshots/video on the store page need work (the code is more fun to work on :)), but hopefully the code is spot on. If you identify any issues, please don’t hesitate to contact me at jeff@wanderlinggames.com and I’ll jump on it asap. Even better; if you have an idea for how to extend AssetBrowser to make it work even better for you, I’d love to hear about it!
Bonus request to other asset developers: I’d love to discuss integrations with you if you think there might be an opportunity to integrate AssetBrowser with your app’s functionality. It’s currently very easy to add new actions; there might be a low-cost way to integrate and drive adoption of both our assets! DM or email me at jeff@wanderlinggames.com and we can chat.
AssetBrowser is written with UIToolkit and includes full source code.
Thanks for reading!
