Blender asset browser support

[TheDuckCow]

At a high level, it would be great to support the Blender Asset browser. This is unfortunately tricky for a number of reasons, but I'll start with what the high level goals could be:

Requirements:

• A user should be able to generate and mark as assets all block models (based on resource pack)
• A user should be able to auto generate all materials, based on scene settings for prep materials (including resource pack)
• A user should be able to auto generate / mark assets out of all meshswap, mobs, and entity source files.
• A user should be able to pick one library from the asset browser and see all assets there, with a hierarchy sidepannel broken into the same areas as MCprep itself: Materials, Blocks, Mobs, Entities, Meshswap.
• Stretch: A user should be able to import a material from the asset browser, and have MCprep auto update the imported asset to match after the drag and drop (ie auto update textures based on render engine, maybe even dynamically swap out the texture pack based on the active one?)

Why it's difficult:

We have dynamically created assets. We want people to be able to use MCprep equally with different assets from different places, and to be able to use material generation with material settings. This means we cannot simply pre-generate the textures and expect it will work for everyone as they like (though that could be a stepping stone). Additionally, if we save assets with tagging for the asset browser, it means those assets won't be available for pre blender 3.0 users, creating a compatibility rift.

That points to auto generating blend files containing the assets on the fly. This, too, is non trivial. Though thankfully I [TheDuckCow] have had recent efforts in a separate project to perform this. The API for the asset browser is rather limited, and creates some complicated to use situations.

• Some operators, most notably the "refresh library button", don't work properly even with context overrides. Some workarounds can make it work in most situations but not all
• We cannot save a blend file separately to the open scene. The best solution I've found in parallel was to open blender in a second background instance and pass in a standalone script to perform the instructions to build and save out the library scene.
• Even there, there's some trickiness/edge cases/crashing vulnerability with assigning previews (since blender defers when the previews are loaded). Though this was solved in the other project

Possible approaches:

• Force a one-time setup where the user has to press a button to converter everything (mobs, entities, materials, meshswap) before they can use the asset browser the first time
  • Either need to create a hopefully stable progress bar connecting to a background instance, or the user needs to sit back and be idle while the active running blender instance attempts to rip through all assets to generate/update files to be marked as assets.
• Pre-execute this function and ship it with MCprep
• Convert the library when and asset needed (but still with an option for a user to bulk generate)
  • E.g. after using "generate material" or importing a rig, it could auto create the marked asset for that asset specifically in the background.
• Potentially directly modify the files locally; MCprep installs generally nest the data it comes with anyways inside that blender version (for ease of install). So other versions of blender wouldn't be impacted. Therefore, maybe it is technically safe to directly save and up version the mob files if it's being called from 3.0+ to mark as assets.
• There's still the question of where to save the materials file though, and how to deal with having multiple resource packs:
  • Make a utility function which lets the user simply make the current blend file be the asset library, and then leave it up to the user to save it somewhere and point to that as a library in preferences?
  • Could automate it more and have a button that suggests how to mark something as an asset. Or, even put alt resource pack asset packs as subfolders in the hierarchy so they could filter for that (probably annoying to use though I'd imagine).
  • We could also take the approach of: have a single asset library created for everything, but then when the user imports (drags and drops) MCprep post-processes and regenerates the thing imported as necessary.

Open for comments, suggestions, and user desired for this integration.

[StandingPadAnimations]

Based on what I'm reading (correct me if I'm wrong, it's pretty late here), the goal is to keep the "dynamicness" (for the lack of a better term) with the asset browser, but I feel like that might be the wrong approach.

No offense, but "background instance" raised some red flags for me

[zNightlord]

We could also take the approach of: have a single asset library created for everything, but then when the user imports (drags and drops) MCprep post-processes and regenerates the thing imported as necessary.

This is the first thing I would think of dragging a block out depend on scene resourcepack and change it. With that problem previously is there is no proper way to know an asset dragged out of "main" asset browser and put in the scene through API.

I looked through the builtin Pose library addon noticed they can specify whatever custom operator to execute with template_asset_view Also there is a question about it on Blender devtalk on asset browser custom drag operator

[StandingPadAnimations]

Here's my idea for the asset browser: we mark all of the rigs (by using a seperate file for 3.0), and then make it easy for the user to A. open the master blend file (the same way we do for sync materials) and B. make it easy to mark a new rig as an asset.

Sure it may not be automatic, but it's a good starting point, and doesn't have a lot of headaches (compared to if we make it dynamic), not to mention it makes rig spawning more "interactive" and less "place a 3D cursor and append a rig".

On 0402, Trung Phạm wrote:

 We could also take the approach of: have a single asset library
 created for everything, but then when the user imports (drags and
 drops) MCprep post-processes and regenerates the thing imported as
 necessary.

This is the first thing I would think of dragging a block out depend on scene resourcepack and change it. With that problem previously is there is no proper way to know an asset dragged out of "main" asset browser and put in the scene through API.

I looked through the builtin Pose library addon noticed they can specify whatever custom operator to execute with template_asset_view Also there is a question about it on Blender devtalk on asset browser [1]custom drag operator

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References

1. https://devtalk.blender.org/t/implementing-custom-drag-operator-with-template-asset-view/21716/5
2. https://github.com/TheDuckCow/MCprep/issues/414#issuecomment-1493627466
3. https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AR4UXCWWCHAVR4OS47TQMBTW7JFEFANCNFSM6AAAAAAWQTGYIQ

[zNightlord]

Yeah marking I think it should be manually too since it fairly simple to mark one in the outliner.

I'm not really sure about storing every rigs inside one "master" blend file. I tried to store many rigs inside one thought it would be convenient but later on it causing unknown lag spike although they all hide away and beside if you right click on asset browser thumbnail it should have an operator to open it in new blender instance to edit and save.

About that there is one issue in Discord I mentioned, about pre 3.2 (3.0, 3.1) mark collection wasn't exist in those so need to use instance collection for marking.

[StandingPadAnimations]

I'm not really sure about storing every rigs inside one "master" blend file. I tried to store many rigs inside one thought it would be convenient but later on it causing unknown lag spike although they all hide away and beside if you right click on asset browser thumbnail it should have an operator to open it in new blender instance to edit and save.

Fair point, and a master blend file would be pretty massive as well.

About that there is one issue in Discord I mentioned, about pre 3.2 (3.0, 3.1) mark collection wasn't exist in those so need to use instance collection for marking.

Instance collections might cause some confusion when people go and try to edit the rigs themselves, maybe we can mark the armatures instead?

On 0403, Trung Phạm wrote:

Yeah marking I think it should be manually too since it fairly simple to mark one in the outliner.

I'm not really sure about storing every rigs inside one "master" blend file. I tried to store many rigs inside one thought it would be convenient but later on it causing unknown lag spike although they all hide away and beside if you right click on asset browser thumbnail it should have an operator to open it in new blender instance to edit and save.

About that there is one issue in Discord I mentioned, about pre 3.2 (3.0, 3.1) mark collection wasn't exist in those so need to use instance collection for marking.

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References

1. https://github.com/TheDuckCow/MCprep/issues/414#issuecomment-1494307535
2. https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AR4UXCRJVOOPVIISR7SOE23W7LEP7ANCNFSM6AAAAAAWQTGYIQ

[zNightlord]

Instance collections might cause some confusion when people go and try to edit the rigs themselves, maybe we can mark the armatures instead?

I know that is quite finicky with "realize" linked override, it is the only way to import a group of objects in pre 3.2. Asset browser don't import the whole children hierachy, but for the datablock is "referenced" like bone shapes it will import other objects along with it.

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/61040487/229693455-2eb04ee9-3127-4242-b8bc-0d05e73f2a37.mp4

*Mark collection in 3.2+ add in a collection instance