Preview Renders¶

Asset Forge renders custom asset preview thumbnails with full control over camera, lighting, thumbnail size, and selection scope. Inspect the setup before committing, then batch render in Quick or Eevee mode.

Choose the Asset Previews workflow. The Backdrop thumbnail picker opens a gallery of L, L Soft, L 135°, C, Dual Wall, Plane, and Empty. The dotted, blue-toned illustrations show backdrop geometry; their colors and patterns are not applied to your render. Shape choices preserve lighting, colors, render mode, camera, thumbnail size, scope, and sample mesh. Empty intentionally has a blank thumbnail: it removes all backdrop geometry and enables transparent background. The backdrop selection describes geometry only, independently of lighting and transparency.

The always-visible HDRI thumbnail picker sits beside Backdrop, with no enable toggle. New settings default to Eevee and a Blender-supplied HDRI. Choosing an image uses HDRI lighting in Eevee without changing the backdrop, floor, or transparency preference. HDRIs illuminate the subject and appear in reflections, but never appear as the image background.

Live Preview remains visible in the workflow, with camera presets and projection buttons underneath. Advanced Settings contains Environment, Camera, Preview Options, and Preview Maintenance. Built-in backdrop shapes are included in normal Asset Forge; saving custom scene presets is not part of this version.

Rendered preview jobs require a saved .blend file and at least one open 3D Viewport. Output images are written to an mma_thumbs folder next to the saved file before they are assigned back to the asset previews.

Environment Setup¶

Light Source¶

HDRI — Uses an environment image from the World Images folder for image-based lighting.
Sun — Uses a directional sun light with configurable strength, softness, rotation, and elevation.
Area — Uses a softer studio-style area light with configurable distance and size.
Point — Uses an omni-directional point light with configurable distance and shadow radius.
Current World — Uses the active scene's World unchanged and selects Eevee, without adding extra lights. Click Refresh Preview after editing the World's nodes. If no World is assigned, choose another light source or add a World first.

Background¶

HDRI lighting uses the selected environment image with World Rotation for orientation and World Strength for brightness. The HDRI is always hidden from the camera, including when older settings stored an opaque background. These controls and the World Images folder remain under Advanced Settings > Environment, together with alternative light sources. Sun, Area, and Point can use a solid Background Color. The source scene World is never edited.

Transparent Background¶

With HDRI lighting, the world is always transparent to the camera while lighting and reflections remain active; selected backdrop geometry remains visible. Transparent Background remains available for other light sources and affects both live and final previews. Choose Empty for transparency with no studio geometry. Changing HDRI images, rotation, or brightness never changes the backdrop selection.

Under Advanced Settings > Preview Options, Include Floor enables the selected backdrop. Backdrop offers the same six geometry choices, with separate color and roughness controls. The gallery stays synchronized with these options. The temporary backdrop fits each asset without moving it and is removed after rendering. Shapes and Empty work in both Quick and Eevee.

Backdrops stay aligned with the scene axes and do not rotate to face the camera. The rear wall is on the +Y side; Dual Wall adds a second wall on +X. Changing camera angle or projection changes your view of the fixed backdrop, not its orientation.

Studio dimensions come from the evaluated world-space bounding box, including modifiers and all rendered meshes in an assembly. Width, depth clearance, height, and curve radius fit proportionally rather than using fixed metre measurements. Flat or thin assets get a small minimum relative to their own size. The floor meets the asset's lowest point. Camera framing can expand floor/wall coverage and moves enclosing walls or ceilings beyond the camera to avoid blocking the asset. Looking out of an open side reveals transparency with HDRI lighting, or the configured world background with other light sources when transparency is disabled. The source asset and camera settings are not moved or edited.

The temporary preview camera also adapts its clipping range for tiny and large assets, avoiding cut-off geometry and depth-buffer artifacts. Your saved Clip Min/Max preferences and source scene camera remain unchanged.

Thumbnail Size¶

Use Size to pick a square preview resolution. Presets run from 32p through 1024p, and Custom lets you type your own pixel size.

Camera Setup¶

Projection¶

Choose the camera projection type for preview renders. Perspective gives a more photographic look and uses focal length, while Orthographic removes perspective distortion for flatter catalogue-style thumbnails.

Padding¶

Edge Padding (%) controls framing. Positive values add more empty border, while negative values tighten the frame and can crop the object.

Camera Angle Presets¶

Use the Camera Presets buttons for Isometric, Front, Side, Top, and 3/4, then fine-tune Camera Rotation, Focal Length, and clip distances under Advanced Settings > Camera. Both locations use the same preset controls. Manual rotation that no longer matches a preset shows as Custom, with no preset highlighted. Presets preserve your projection choice.

Match View copies the angle, projection, and lens from the first available 3D Viewport. Match Camera uses the active scene camera, including its world-space orientation. These actions do not move the source camera. Each asset is still automatically framed: camera position, shift, crop, and orthographic scale are not copied. Missing sources or unsupported panoramic cameras produce a warning without changing settings.

Live Preview¶

The visible Live Preview window lets you inspect the camera and lighting rig before committing to a full render. Under Advanced Settings > Preview Options, choose the sample Preview Mesh (Monkey, Cube, UV Sphere, Icosphere, Cylinder, Cone, or Torus), optionally enable Include Floor, and adjust backdrop color and roughness. HDRI lighting stays hidden from the camera; other light sources offer Transparent Background.

Configure your environment and camera settings.
Wait briefly for Asset Forge to generate the sample preview automatically.
Review the result and adjust settings as needed.
After each change, wait for the preview to refresh automatically.

Note

Setup preview refreshes automatically after a brief pause when you change lighting, camera, preview mesh, thumbnail size, padding, background, or the selected Quick/Eevee preview mode.

Render Modes¶

Quick¶

A fast Workbench-based render path with approximate lighting. All backdrop shapes and Empty are supported, but HDRI lighting, custom lights, and Current World are not reproduced. Choosing an HDRI selects Eevee; switching back to Quick shows a reminder. HDRIs remain hidden from the camera in either mode.

Eevee¶

A full Eevee render using the add-on's render rig. Produces higher quality previews with proper lighting, shadows, and materials.

Supports cancel with Esc during rendering.
Takes longer than Quick, especially for large batches.

Batch Scope¶

Choose a target in the Scope dropdown, then press Render Previews (or Plan Previews with Dry Run enabled). Changing the scope does not start an action. Source is enabled only for Selected; Collection / Catalog and All Assets do not use it.

Selected¶

Render previews for the currently selected assets. When Selected is active, choose whether the targets come from:

Outliner / Viewport — Uses the current object selection. Quick expects selected objects that are already asset-marked, while Eevee can render the current selection directly before the preview is attached to the datablock.
Asset Browser — Uses the current local asset selection in the Asset Browser.

Collection / Catalog¶

Render previews for all assets in the active asset catalogue. If Asset Forge cannot resolve a current catalogue selection, it falls back to the active collection.

All Assets¶

Render previews for every asset-marked object and collection in the current file.

Clear Selected Previews¶

Use Advanced Settings > Preview Maintenance > Clear Selected Previews to remove custom preview images from the selected local assets in the Asset Browser. This always uses the Asset Browser selection, independently of render Scope and Source. With Dry Run enabled, the action becomes Plan Preview Clearing and reports CLEAR targets without changing previews. Real clearing reports CLEARED, SKIPPED, or FAILED results.

Tip

Use Dry Run before batch rendering to check the render setup and identify obviously unsupported targets. After the real preview job finishes, the report is replaced with actual REFRESHED, RENDERED, FAILED, or SKIPPED results. Expand Issues and select a failed asset to see the runtime error reason.