Using The Content Library

Different Asset Views

In the top right, you will be able to choose which asset library you want to show, but you could also choose the Unified View, which will show you the assets from all the different libraries, making it possible to search through them all at the same time.

Available Asset Libraries

As of Dash 1.8 you have access to: your downloaded UE-Bridge assets, your downloaded standalone-Bridge atlases, the full free Poly Haven library, the full free IES library and all your customs assets that you have tagged with the AI Tagging system of Dash, this include both those in the current UE project but also those from all your other UE projects.

AI Tagging

If you open the Current Project view in the Dash Content Library, it will scan your Unreal Engine project for assets and give you the option to start computing tags for your assets. You could either do this for all assets directly, or choose a sub-folder on the left side, starting out with a smaller folder is in general recommended as this process could be quite slow for bigger folders. Once you have done this, all these assets are now searchable by keywords and even by colors.

And the good thing is that they are not only searchable in the current UE project, they are now also searchable, browsable and useable in all your other UE projects. No need to migrate assets to a new Unreal Engine project any more, just find the asset you need and once you drag it into your new scene, Dash will import it to the project in the backend.

Placing Assets

When you drag an asset from the Dash Content Library into your scene you automatically enter Placement Mode, which means the object snap to whatever surface you drag it over and you can also open up the floating Help panel which shows a bunch of different controls on how you can adjust the placement of the asset. Object placement has never been this easy.

Placing Materials

With Dash it is super easy to drag any material from the Content Library onto any objects in your scene. If you drop materials from Megascans or Poly Haven, Dash will automatically open up the Material Edit tool, which gives you easy access to the most important material settings. For example, Tiling, Normal and Roughness. If you select 3 materials by holding SHIFT and drop them in while holding CTRL you can even create a Vertex Blend Material.

CTRL + Drag and Drop

If you drag and drop assets/materials while holding you will see a popup menu, this is a dynamic meny that adjusts based on what you drag in and what you had selected in your scene before. This menu includes options on what you could to with the asset/material, for example, scatter it, drop it with physics, or place in a grid.