Asset Wizard

The Asset Wizard Addon is a merge of two addons: an asset manager and a node wizard. While the Asset Manager is inspired by the SimpleAssetManager, it looks pretty decent. And the Node Wizard is another feature that is really useful to manage your nodes and export your materials. For some reason I didn’t try this addon earlier but finally I got myself this present a few days ago.

What is included in the addon

The package is quite big and I cannot discuss every detail in this article, but here is an overview that might come in handy to get an impression of what is included in the Asset Wizard Addon.

• Asset Wizard
  • Asset Wizard Manager
    • Objects
    • Materials
    • Render Previews
  • Asset Wizard Exporter
    • Rename, Location and Rotation
    • Output Categorie
    • Export Settings
• Node Wizard
  • Node Wizard
    • Material from Textures
    • Material layers
    • Vector Manipulation Nodes
    • Extended Procedural Nodes
    • Utility Nodes
    • Masks
    • Materials
  • Node Wizard Map Generator
    • Export location
    • UV Map
    • AO Mask
    • Curvature Mask
  • Node Wizard Export
    • Asset Material Generator

The Asset Wizard Manager

Below a screenshot of the Asset Wizard Manager. A picture is worth thousands words sometimes. You see that we can append Objects as well as Materials. The dropdown (FromBlocker in the screenshot) shows the categories. And if you click on the big thumbnail, you will get a popup showing all the assets in that categorie, like in other Asset Managers. Below that, there are some intesting options, especially At Cursor and Lock XY. And below the Objects you see another manager but then for materials.

The Asset Wizard Exporter

While the Asset Wizard Manager gives us features to import objects and materials, the Asset Wizard Exporter gives features to export objects. To export materials, we use the Node Wizard (See overview). Below a screenshot of the Asset Wizard Exporter:

In the screenshot above, you can see we can Clear Rotation, Rename Object and Materials. I leave this mostly on original because by habit I already arrange that. Then you see a text-field and a plus which is to make a new category. So if you want a new category (optional) you fill in the name and click on the plus. Before you do that, check the dropdown (ROOT). With that drop-down you can decide where you want a new category (in the Root, or do you want a subcategory). Next is are the Export Settings. So you can export it as .blend file or FBX. Then select the category, give it a name and export.

The Node Wizard

This is pretty awesome and I wish I’ve seen it before. I think everything in there is useful and it also complements my own Material Nodes Addon. Note that we can find the Node Wizard in the Shader editor in the N-Panel. Below a screenshot that shows what’s in there:

It starts with two interesting buttons; PBR and Image. While the PBR button imports a set of images, the Image button imports 1 texture (albedo, diffuse or color) and derives also roughness and bump out of it. This latter one might be handy for when you want to save some RAM. Maybe you want to use this for materials that are a bit further away. A lot of other options follow, which I don’t discuss in this article. Those options are providing useful nodegroups you can use to build up your material.

Next are the Masks and Materials. I love Masks! Especially masks based on Edge, Curvature, AO, etc, because with that you can generate materials that have a relation to the geometry. And that gives a kind of story compared to masks that a just procedural dust, smudge or scratch textures. (It’s nice to combine them). Below the masks:

For some of the Masks you need to use the Cycles Render Engine to see them. Most likely that is why I don’t have such masks in the EEVEE production Suite. But because this is quite an important feature, I think I will bake where need, so I can use it in EEVEE without switching over to Cycles. And it seems we can use the Node Wizard Map generator for that:

And to export materials so we can see it in the Asset Manager (see beginning of this article) we can use the Node Wizard Export:

Where to download the Asset Wizard

You can download the Asset Wizard Addon over here.

Hint: keep also an eye on Thomas Hoppe’s new addon, The Material Wizard! At the moment I get familiar with it and will tell about it in one of the next articles.