Unity Asset Manager is a centralized solution that enables you to arrange all of your Organization's assets in one place. Asset Manager is designed to solve problems around asset discovery, interoperability, lifecycle, and collaboration. You can achieve all of this from our cloud based web app but also extend that functionality using our API, SDK's or, integrations such as with Unity Editor. Below are basic concepts that will help you understand better how Asset Manager works.
Projects and Collections
Projects
To get started, you need a project to add your assets to. Projects determine the location of assets and manage access permissions.Once you set up a project, you need to add users to the project. And then assign them a user type and an Asset Manager add on role for them to have access to assets in your project. You can:
- Create a project in Asset manager. The new project appears on your Unity Cloud Dashboard.
- Enable existing cloud projects inside Asset Manager. To enable existing projects:
- Go to the bottom of the left navigation panel in Asset Manager
- Select Manage Projects.
- Select the Enable projects tab and enable the project you want. The newly enabled project appears on your Unity Cloud Dashboard.
Collections
Collections are like folders that let you group assets in a hierarchical structure within your project. You can have nested collections inside other collections. An asset can be a part of multiple collections across one or many projects.
Roles and permissions
To access a project and its assets, users must be given access to the cloud project through the administration panel on the cloud dashboard.
Organization user types
There are two main user types at an Organization level in the Organization members page:
- Organization Owner: by default, has full access to all projects and their assets and user administration rights on all projects.
- Organization User: has to be given individual access to each project.
An Organization Owner can give users access to projects in the project settings panel. You can add users from your Organization or via their email address, and set their user type as either Project Owner or User.
- Project Owner can add other users to a project and set their user type and role.
- User has access to the project but doesn't have specific access to Asset Manager for that project.
Organization role
Asset Manager Admin The Asset Manager Admin role is an Organization level role for Asset Manager which has full access to all assets and asset manager features across all projects.
Asset Manager add-in roles
For access to Asset Manager in a project, you also need an add-in role for Asset Manager. There are three types of add-in roles:
- Contributor: You can add, remove, and edit assets and collections
- Consumer: You can download assets
- Viewer: You can view assets
Assets
Assets are the primary component of Asset Manager, and they can be as simple or complex as you need. An asset in Asset Manager is defined as: Files + Metadata = Asset You can upload any type of file to an asset. We support previews for some files like 3D models and 2D images on our web app. Each asset consists of two key components: files and metadata. You can version assets to track changes to files or metadata.
To edit an asset, including its files, metadata, versions, or status, you need to have a Contributor role in the project containing the asset.
Files and datasets
An asset can have many files and the files are organized into Datasets. An asset can have many files organized into datasets. Datasets allow you to create file containers for your files. For example, you can have a 'Source' dataset for your uploaded 3D file, a 'Game Ready' dataset for a game-ready 3D model, and a 'Preview' dataset with a GLB file to preview an optimized version of the asset on the web. In this case, one asset has three files in three separate datasets, each with a clear label. You can also reference a file from one dataset to another to avoid duplication.
By default, each asset comes with two datasets:
- Source dataset: The Source dataset stores any files you upload during creation
- Preview dataset: The Preview dataset contains any files needed to preview the asset, such as a .jpg used as a thumbnail.
Metadata
Files are the content of your asset and metadata describes the content. Metadata includes details such as name, type, description, and tags. You can also create detailed and customized metadata to suit your needs. To create new metadata or add metadata from your Organization's library, select Add Custom Metadata. While every metadata must have a name and type, all other metadata fields are optional.
Only Organization Owners or Asset Manager Admins can create metadata types for your organization.
Versions
Asset Versioning allows you to track changes to files and metadata over time. By default, all assets are in a 'Pending' state and can be edited. Once you save a version, it becomes 'frozen' and can no longer be edited. When an asset is undergoing a transformation, its version state is set to AutoSubmit. This indicates that the asset version is saved automatically once the transformation is complete. To make changes, select Edit to create a new and Unfrozen version that you can modify until you save it. You can continue this process for each new version. You can also label each version to easily find and use it in project pipelines.
Status
Each asset version has a status that you can update to reflect its current state. For example, one version might be in Draft while another is Approved. This helps you determine whether a version is ready for use in your project.
Search
Asset Manager has a simple search bar that returns assets with names or tags matching or partially matching your search keywords. For more advanced searches, use the filters based on all the metadata available across your assets within your organization.
Transformations
Asset Manager has some out of the box transformations that generate 2D and 3D previews for 3D files. Enterprise users can also generate 3D Data Streaming files for large CAD and 3D meshes. We will also release more transformations based on the Pixyz engine for users who want to generate specific formats.
APIs and SDKs
All Asset Manager users can create their own customizations using our fully supported and well-documented API and SDKs.
Integrations
We support multiple integrations with Asset Manager. To access integrations, go to the bottom of the left navigation panel in Asset Manager, select Integrations. We have the following integrations with Asset Manager:
- Asset Manager for Unity: The Unity Editor integration enables Unity Editor users to access their Asset Manager projects and assets directly from the Editor. They can also upload assets to Asset Manager and import assets from Asset Manager into the Editor.
- Unity Cloud Python SDK: Unity Cloud Python SDK allows you to connect your Python application with Unity Cloud services. It includes samples like the Bulk asset creation which let you easily bulk upload content to Asset Manager.
- Unity Version Control: View your Unity VCS files in the Asset Manager.
- Asset Manager for Blender: Upload Blender content to the Asset Manager. Click Open on GitHub to for further instructions.
- Asset Manager for Pixyz Studio: Connect Pixyz Studio with Unity Cloud to enable 3D data specialists to locally import, assemble, and optimize 3D models in an interactive environment. Once ready, upload the models to the Asset Manager for seamless review and collaboration with stakeholders and partners.