Explorer

The Asset Manager panel is an important tool used to access and manage project assets. When starting to make a game, importing assets is usually a necessary step. You can use the Hello World template project as a starting point when creating a new project. After you create and open a new project, various types of assets are visible in the Explorer panel.

Explorer Panel introduction

The Explorer panel is the main panel. It has a heads-up menu area, a central tree list area, and a bottom information display area.

• The functions of the heads-up menu area are: New asset button, Sort by button, Search type button, Search box, Fold or expand all button, and Refresh list button
• The central tree list area mainly reflects the hierarchical relationship of assets. The root node is the asset root folder corresponding to the file manager of the operating system. The editor calls an asset database (DB for short), and is located in the project folder. It belongs to the project asset; Internal DB comes with the editor and provides some built-in necessary assets. It is a read-only asset. It cannot be added, deleted, modified, but can be directly referenced or copied.
• The bottom display area is the URL of the asset after the asset is selected, such as db://assets
• The right-click menu of the panel is also an important function. The contents of the right-click menu in different locations are different, and the unavailable menus are grayed out.

• The shortcut of the panel currently supports the operation of assets:

  • Copy: Ctrl or Cmd + C
  • Paste: Ctrl or Cmd + V
  • Copy: Ctrl or Cmd + D, Ctrl + drag asset
  • Delete: Delete
  • Up and down selection: up and down arrows
  • Folder folding: left arrow or Backspace
  • Expand the folder: right arrow or Enter
  • Multi-select: Ctrl or Cmd + click
  • Multi-select: Shift + click
  • Rename: Enter/F2
  • Cancel Rename: Esc

New assets

Click the New Asset button when adding a asset. An input box will appear. The name of the asset is required. If the input is empty, the asset will not be created. If there is no selected item in the tree list, it will be newly created on the root node of Asset DB by default; if there are multiple selected items, it will be newly created in the first selected item at this time.

In addition, there is a New entry in the right-click menu of the folder.

New asset:

Right-click on the new asset in the menu:

Selecting an asset

In the Asset List, you can use the following operations to select assets:

• Click to Select Assets.
• The up and down arrows on the keyboard can be used to select.
• Hold down Ctrl or Cmd + click to select multiple assets.
• Hold down Shift + click to select multiple assets.

Moving an asset

The assets are moved by dragging the tree nodes:

• Move the asset: the asset is dragged from one folder in the tree list to another folder. An orange frame will indicate the range of the folder to which the new location belongs.
• Drag out assets: you can drag .prefab, .gltf, .mesh, .fbx assets to the Scene Panel or the Hierarchy Manager to generate nodes.

• Drag the asset: drag the node from the Explorer Panel to a folder in the list. You can save the node as a .prefab asset. Please see thePrefab Asset documentation. From the file manager of the operating system, drag the file to the list to realize the asset import.

  

Deleting an asset

Right-click Delete in the menu, or use the keyboards Delete key, which supports deleting assets in batches after multiple selections. After the assets are deleted, you can restore them in the Recycle Bin of the operating system.

Re-importing assets

Right-click Re-import Resource in the menu to update the data generated to the Library and support batch re-importing.

Sorting assets

The Sort by button in the top menu has 2 sorting methods: Sort by name, and Sort by type. The sorting method has a memory, and the next time you open the editor, the saved sorting method will be preserved.

Searching for assets

The Search Type button in the top menu has 3 sorting methods: Search Name, Search UUID, and Search Type. Where Search Type is the Import type of the search asset, not the suffix type of the asset.

The Search box changes the instant search. You can select the asset in the search results, after clearing the search content, the selected asset will be relocated within the window to achieve the purpose of locating the asset by searching.

Collapsing assets

The Fold or expand all button is an easy way to retract the view range and find assets easily. The parent node in the tree supports shortcut keys. First select the asset, and then perform keyboard operations:

• Folder folding: left arrow or backspace
• Expand the folder: right arrow or Eenter/return key

Renaming an asset

Select a asset, use either the shortcut key F2 or by a right-click and selecting Rename to modify the name. The name cannot be empty. Use the shortcut key Esc will cancel the rename. The name of the script cannot start with a number and cannot be the same as an existing script file.