How to Create and Manage MATERIAL LIBRARIES in the Blender Asset Browser!

In this video, we talk about how you can create material libraries using the Blender Asset Browser so you can quickly access ALL of your materials in any Blender project!

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Introduction
0:20 - Where to find the Blender asset browser (and how to use it!)
1:15 - How to add materials to the asset browser
1:46 - Finding the Blender Asset folder location(s)
3:25 - How to mark Blender materials as assets
4:47 - How to organize your materials with catalogs
7:25 - How to organize your Blender material files in your asset folder
8:02 - Other Blender 3.0 Tutorials

[TheCGEssentials]

Hi everyone! Let me know if you have any questions about managing your materials using the asset browser in the comments below! :)

[EIendir]

The guy and channel is so underrated so share it every possible place to others see em !

[zyris]

Hi Justin. Thanks for all the great content! Very useful over the years. Here's one for you!

I have materials that use animations that are controlled from custom properties in an object (visibility, scale, orientation etc), as well as materials that depend on external files such as images and image sequences. My use cases for this are a computer screen and a mobile phone that I can change at specific points in my animation by simply keyframing the custom properties.

My animation consists of multiple shots of the same scene from different animated camera angles as the character interacts with the screen. All good and well.

But now I want to make a change to the screen material, for example change the images used in the sequence displayed on the computer screen. The asset browser is useless for this. Even appending from one of the .blend files after I have made the change is a nightmare! The material links force the screen object to be appended as well, plus it is parented to the computer object which is parented to the desk it's standing on, so those all come along for the ride. Plus the desk is in a different collection from the computer, so more unwanted objects join in with the append. Then I have a robot arm that picks up something that is standing on the desk, parented to it of course. The process of picking it up includes the use of a "Child Of" constraint, so the robot arm comes along with the append as well and whatever that is parented to. Plus all of their materials get duplicated...

My only practical solution at this stage it seems is to manually modify the screen material manually in each of the .blend files in the project...

[JuanFernandez-tibv]

Great video, super instructional! thank you very much

[artursvancans]

They hid the "Mark as Asset" pretty well. There should also be the option in the Shader Editor

[Argyll]

I'm sure that the guys who "designed" the way materials library works in Blender were also the team who set out to design a horse and ended up with a Camel. Why users have to jump through so many hoops to create something that's very simple in other (professional) 3D programs is a complete mystery.

[synthbendati]

Thank you so much this was so clear and helpful and really helps for organizing materials and 3d assets

[mix-up]

When I sort my various files that I keep, like texture and such, I normally put them in brackets '[' ']' abd then class their properties with a tag like resolution (0k, 1k, 2k, 4k, 8k, ) or like Metal, Ground, Gloss, Mat, Reflect, Brick, Wall, Damage, Worn, Used, Crack, Scratch, Pattern, Intact, Perfect, Cloth, Leather etc. and color some time.

[johndeggendorf]

Awesome, thanks Justin…valuable information & concise. ✊🍷🎩🎩🎩

[fxswanlast]

Nice to see you are still here. Been awhile since I did blender.... in case i missed it: yes it would help having a tutorial on how to actually manage assets. I read that some do it by project, others create some kind of master file folder system on a designated guide, etc. Also, I understand you can asset rigged characters and just rigs. Any input into that?
Thanks again

[jaronjackson]

Thanks Justin! Relatively new to Blender. What are yours thoughts on managing other 3rd-Party Asset Managers (Add-ons), should they be kept separately or linked to Blender's Library? Maybe you should do that vid on creating larger files. Also, should models be filed the same way as materials? Does thumb nails automatically generate? You're a good sport...cheers!

[precisechaos]

I suffer from ADHD and 3d modeling makes me hyperfocus almost every time. I love it, and it's something I used to do back in 2004-2007 in Second Life. I love watching all of your videos. I struggle with assets and most of my wasted time is trying to get things like this onto my object. I'm going to have to pick up your MaterialIQ pack to try things out. I got into modeling again because of video game modding, but I'm starting to do more renders and low poly modeling than I am modding. I need to learn how to bake textures so my cars look as cool as they do in Blender. There are too many dang shaders and settings to work with!

[SantoSVD]

Oh, Nice, this Is what i was looking for. Bhg idk why my assets looks like darkee in assets Preview 😅 why?

[robertmaciejczyk]

I changed name of one of materials from my asset browser and now in project that uses this material it is missing. How can I update the name of missing material in my projects ?

[manuelhofmann]

Thank you Justin, that helped! Question: Where can i find like the best, really high quality materials for blender? Are there any packs out there that can keep up with e.g. siger studio materials!?

[solarisaint]

It saves it into the asset browser, but when i close out the model and then open it again, my materials are not in the browser anymore .

[belzunze]

It would be very good to know how to see beams to organize the categories in both Materials and Objects.
How do you organize it?
Thank you and regards

[lassebauer]

Works like a charm- except for the fact that every single asset/material is duplicated, so I have two of each next to each other in the AB. Any way to avoid this?

[cruchingtiger]

So, as an overall practise, should we be keeping a main file with basic primitives holding our textures and if we want to add a new texture from a different file, rather than just add that texture to the library, do we copy and paste an object to the blender file that we've saved in our assets folder and add it THERE and save?
If so, it's a shame that you can't just add a new material from within any file and have it just somehow go to your library.

[thorn-]

So, I want to see those shader balls that represent all the materials in the currently active loaded scene, not materials in another external file. How's this done?