Asset Browser - Default Asset LIbrary

Introduction

Bforartists comes with a default asset library – registered by addon. This is enabled by default. With this asset library you can find numerous default assets to get you up and running with your art quickly and efficiently.

The Asset Browser Library

The Asset Browser is an editor in the Asset Workspace that gives you some standard lighting settings for the Cycles and Eevee renderer, obects in collections, node groups, materials and more. It contains for example the classical three-point setup. But also some basic volumetrics examples – or a shader ball or color checker reference stand.

The default library addon can be turned off in the User Preferences.

Note that the Eevee light setup is rudimentary. Eevee is a realtime render engine. To achieve more realistic results you may want to use Light probes, and bake the lights and shadows. This cannot be done by the addon though. Light probes requires a scene, light and object specific setup.

Library Contents

To select the Default Library, choose it from drop-down box that contains the libraries that comes with Bforartists. Here you can select what asset you want to load. You also have a Geometry Nodes Library.

The assets are grouped by categories.

Categories

• Collections
• Lights
• Static Meshes
• Backgrounds
• Utility
• Materials
• Ceramic
• Cloth
• Foilage
• Glass
• Liquids
• Metals
• Misc
• Paint
• Plastic
• Rubber
• Templates
• Utility
• Wood
• Shader nodegroups
• Color
• Layers
• Mapping
• Masks
• Patterns
• Shaders
• Shapes
• Utility
• Geometry Nodes
• Grease Pencil
• Operations
• Read
• Write
• Material
• Mesh
• Normals
• Primitives

<!-- -->

Simple Usage

Preparation

Select the Assets Workspace or alternatively change and editor by toggling the Hide Editor Type and changing it to the Asset Browser.

Once you have an asset browser open, select the Default Library from the drop down to the top left of the editor.

If you don’t see any assets, press the refresh icon.

Loading Assets

Click on any categories in the left sidebar, then click and drag on an item to then add it into either the Node editors or the 3D View.

The asset and editor context may influence where you can drag and drop. Example: A collection can only be added to the 3D Viewport, but a Node Group can only be added to the Node Editor in the correct mode (Shader, Geometry Nodes, etc)

You can also drag and drop the assets onto data slots.

Preferences

The Default Asset Library is an addon which comes with various functions like modular library management, additional operators and wizards and extended asset interfacing.

When you enable the addon, it will copy the asset library to a central library location.

Library Information

Status

Shows if the addon library is registered and available.

Wizards

Triggering the Wizard

Smart assets contain a “Wizard” to help set the asset up. When you drag in an asset with a Wizard hat icon, this means the asset has a wizard enabled. After adding the Smart asset, the Wizard will popup a setup panel to help adjust quick settings to get the advanced asset running.

This wizard can also be used to run and re-run operations to ease the use of the asset.

To re-trigger the wizard, you can go to the 3D View – Sidebar – Item tab – Asset Properties panel and run the “Open Asset Wizard” or use the Asset Operators in the asset modifier stack.

You can also go to the 3D View - Header – Object – Assets – Open Asset Wizard or use the Sidebar to re-trigger the asset.

Using the Sidebar to change asset properties

You can adjust Geometry Nodes Asset Modifier settings and common properties through slider properties and check boxes directly from the 3D View in the Sidebar.

You can modify numerical inputs for quick parameter changes by size, distance or angle.

Access these properties from the 3D View sidebar in the Item tab, in the Primitive Properties panel.

Default Library

Collections - Lights

Here you can get an overview how the result looks like for the different lighting set-ups. Note that just the Cycles results are showing here.

Be careful with the volumetrics examples. Especially the Musgrave example can render eons.

Collections – Static Meshes

This category contains static meshes with the prefix “SM_”, which are collections with objects and materials to be used in various situations.

Backgrounds

This category contains quick photographic backdrops.

Utility

This category contains utility meshes for object scale, lighting and others, including a shader ball.

Curve

These are Geometry Nodes nodegroups for Curve and Curves objects.

Grease Pencil

This category contains Geometry Nodes nodegroups for Grease Pencil Objects, you can find them in the Geometry Nodes Add Curve menu.

Materials

This category contains materials useful to quickly apply materials to your objects via drag and drop. You can then later modify the materials in the Properties Editor Materials tab or in the Shader Editor.

Shader Nodegroups

This category contains shader nodegroups useful to create procedural materials in the Shader Editor.

Color

These nodegroups are used to define color halftone effects or a simple PBR layer mix node.

(Vector) Mapping

These nodegroups are used as vector UV mapping nodes to define vector interactions from various texture projections types, from tiling to deformations.

Masks

These nodegroups are useful to create masks for edgewear and other effects when layering materials or textures.

Most of these edge masks nodes work exclusively with Cycles, though one works with Eevee. They also contain edge noise, edge breakup and ambient occlusion masking for more control.

They work best when you bake the results as a texture mask to your meshes that have been unwrapped.

Patterns

These nodegroups are useful to create procedural patterns for masks or textures in your materials. Each comes with their own set of parameters and data outputs, from UVs, tile position, random color, random values and more.

Shader

These nodegroups are useful to select shaders via ID or color switches.

Shapes

These nodegroups are procedural shapes that you can use with a combination of mapping and pattern nodegroups to then create masks or new patterns. Useful for creating new textures, brushes and motion graphics.

Utility

These nodegroups are useful to assist various miscellaneous tasks with shader nodes from normals, colour and masks.

Geometry Nodes Library

Grease Pencil

Operations

Delete Empty Layers

Removes all grease pencil layers that contain no strokes or data—helps performance.

Read

Layer Size

Displays the resolution or size setting of selected grease pencil layers.

Reveals fill material details for strokes in the selected grease pencil object.

Shows stroke-related grease pencil information. Ideal for optimization or debugging.

Write

Applies a consistent stroke thickness based on screen space (rather than object scale), helping ensure visual uniformity regardless of zoom or resolution. This depends on the Camera View.

Controls edge softness or blending falloff of strokes. Enables more painterly or smooth transitions.

Applies predefined color values to both stroke and fill channels of selected grease pencil elements.

Adjusts transparency levels for stroke and fill independently. Useful for layering and compositing effects.

Materials

Inherit Material

This uses the material in the Material tab of the Properties editor as a Geometry Nodes material override.

This utility transfers the first material slot from an assigned material from the parent object that holds the Geometry Nodes modifier object to the Geometry Nodes procedural geometry. It’s especially useful in workflows where instanced or procedural generated geometry needs to adopt top level material settings through top level manual assignment.

Mesh

Mesh Lines and Silhouette

Variation

Randomization

Introduces procedural noise into line generation for organic or sketchy effects.

Factor

Intensity of variation.

Scale / Detail / Lacunarity / Distortion / Roughness

Fine-tunes the procedural noise characteristics.

Weight Map

Customizes variation intensity via a vertex group.

Inner Lines

Adds an inverse hull mesh to simulate lines across surface features to emphasize internal geometry.

Width

Controls thickness of inner lines.

Silhouette

Highlights mesh contours by drawing a backdrop mesh that has been flattened behind the camera angle. This creates a silhouette line or mesh. This is based on the camera view only.

Weight Map Override

Applies custom width influence from a vertex groups. To use, select an existing vertex group to use, then use the Weight Paint mode to paint. Weight of 1.0 is maximum influence that displaces the width of the inverse hull lines or silhouette, and weight of 0.0 is minimum influence.

Factor

Strength of the effect of the weight map.

Color

Normals

Blend Normals by Proximity

Adds an object that references a collection to merge all children mesh objects with blended normals and materials by proximity, through intersection distance and blur. This also displaces meshes at intersections.

This asset is ideal for smoothing transitions between intersecting surfaces, faking lighting continuity, or unifying shading across modular components.

Use

This contains a setup wizard to begin.

1. Drag and drop the asset into the scene
2. You will be prompted to select a target collection
3. This will then convert the target collection into driver objects with optional bounding visibility, relative position and material blending – then it create a new mesh with blended normals.
4. Now you can add new objects to the target collection to influence the new blended normals mesh.
5. When you are ready, apply the modifier to remesh, start sculpting or modeling. The normals will remain on the applied mesh.

Target Collection

Specifies the collection of the group of objects used to influence the normal blending.

Enable Bounds Display

This will turn on Bounds display for all the objects in the target collection, useful to remove any z-fighting normals when using a Relative Position on the new blended normals mesh object.

If you turn it off and reapply the wizard, it will remove the Bounds display from all objects in the target collection.

Modifier Properties

Quality

This defines the quality of the normal blending which affects performance.

• High: Uses blending by proximity. Default. This can be low on performance if there are many islands or instances being evaluated.
• Low: Uses a “nuetral” normal at the intersections. This is more performant but less noticeable.

Material Blend

Intersection Displacement

Enables geometry displacement at intersection zones. Controls how intersection regions between meshes are offset and displaced before normal blending. Used to create bulges, dents, or organic merging effects

Normal Blur

Optional secondary blur targeting only normals.

Material Override

Toggles material overrides, otherwise it will inherit each objects from the target collections' material.

Info

Displays how many mesh islands are currently being blended. Useful for performance monitoring and debugging.

Inherit Smoothness

This utility transfers the smoothness (normals) of the parent object that holds the Geometry Nodes modifier object to the Geometry Nodes procedural geometry. It’s especially useful in workflows where instanced or procedural generated geometry needs to adopt top level smoothness settings through top level manual assignment.

Primitives

These smart primitives are procedural shapes with gizmos to control width, height, resolution, radius, revolutions angles, and other settings including bevel, bevel resolution and other controls.

Use

Using the Gizmos

When the modifier is selected, you can use gizmos directly in the viewport to adjust values of the primitives in an intuitive sense. They are color coded to specific functions.

Red/Green/Blue Square is XYZ scale respectively

Red/Green/Blue Arrow is XYZ loop resolution respectively

Primary Yellow

Circle: Revolve Angle

Square: Scale all axis’

Arrow: Adjust all loop resolutions

Secondary Cyan

Arrow: Bevel Resolution

Square: Bevel Scale

Circle: Twist

Using the Sidebar and Modifier properties

Basic Shapes

Advanced Forms