Auto-Assign Preview for 3D Models and Materials

Previews for 3D assets are crucial as they provide visual references, allowing users to quickly identify and choose suitable assets like models, materials, IES files, and HDR/EXR/OSL files, without needing to individually open or render each one.
The ability to assign multiple previews to an asset allows users to view different angles or facets of a model, or link additional files like descriptions or proxy files, providing a comprehensive overview at a glance.

The Project Manager tool lets you assign previews to all asset types.
It automatically adds previews using images located near the models and materials.
If the image names don’t match the model/material names, you can manually assign previews by dragging and dropping from Windows Explorer or directly from Project Manager onto the related asset.

Content

Search Directories
Filename Match
Additional Settings

Assets can have several previews, like different views of a model or additional files linked to the model, such as a description document or a proxy file.

Previews can also be assigned to multiple files simultaneously by selecting the files or directories and using the Auto-Assign Preview utility from the right-click menu.

Also, files are added to the gallery automatically when you render a preview using the Project Manager or Batch Render tool.
Besides, when you create new proxies by drag and drop from the utility, the proxies, and associated material library are also linked to the model. So you can always find all linked attachments in the model`s gallery

The utility can search for previews in asset folders, subfolders, or specified directories.
Filename matching options include using the same filename, adding a suffix to the preview filename, ignoring the suffix for material/model filenames, and a Fuzzy Search for loosely related filenames.

Settings

Search Directories

The utility can search for previews in asset folders, subfolders, or higher-level folders, or even if previews are located far from the main file, users can specify folders to search.

Filter Directories
Users can include or exclude folders using filters.
Here you can define masks by which folders will be included or excluded from the search.
You can also define the depth of the search in subfolders, or higher-level folders

Filename Match

For filename matching, users have several options:
Same Filename – preview file name matches the asset file name.

Add Suffix to Preview Filename – Links files where the model name and preview name are similar but with a suffix. Settings include separators and suffix options, and regex can be used for complex cases.

Example:
If your models, are called “plant.max”, and the preview has the name “plant_001.jpg“. Just choose this option and use the following settings.

Separators: <whitespace><-> <_>
Suffix: <digits> <letters>

Regex – A regular expression is a sequence of characters that specifies a match pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for “find” or “find and replace” operations on strings, or for input validation.
Wikipedia

Ignore Suffix for Material/Model Filename – Useful when model|material names have suffixes like “_vray” or “_corona”, and the preview is named simply (e.g., “plant.jpg”). Settings include separators and suffix options, or specific suffixes like <vray> <corona>.

Example:
If your models, are called “plant_vray.max” or “plant_corona.max“, and the preview has the name “plant.jpg“. Just choose this option and use the following settings.

Separators: <whitespace><-> <_>
Suffix: <letters> or for the example above, you can use <vray> <corona>

Fussy Search – For linking previews with very different filenames from the model. Users can specify characters or strings to ignore or use regex for complex matching.

Example:
A preview file called “B _ & _ B_Italia_1966–42_Chaise_longue_preview.jpg“
with files with names such as “bebitalia_1966_42_mr.max“, “bebitalia_1966_42_vray.max” and “bebitalia_1966_42.3ds“.

You can use the following settings.
Ignore:
<_mr><_vray><_preview><whitespace><-><_><&>
or
<regex:_mr|_vray|_preview|-|_|s|&>

Supported Preview Extensions
At the bottom of the utility, users can specify file types to be used as previews, with default types being JPG, PNG, BMP, TGA, TIF, GIF, and AVI.
You can disable some of these types or add new ones.

Additional Settings

On the Sorting&Exclusion tab, you can re-order linked files.
For example, with the default settings, files containing _preview in the name will be moved higher in the gallery, and those with the inscription _wire will be moved to the bottom of the list.
These settings are also used when searching for

The order of placement affects which image will be used as a preview

Users can also remove the link between assets and previews using the “Clear Gallery” checkbox.

You can also clear the gallery using a right-click menu over selected assets – “Clear Gallery”
These options remove links between assets and previews and don’t change anything on the hard drive

Settings on this tab can apply to assets in selected directories or all assets in the database.