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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.

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

Lighting Type

  • 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.

Background

Configure the background used for preview renders. HDRI mode uses the selected environment image with World Rotation for orientation and World Strength for brightness. Sun, Area, and Point lighting use a solid Background Color.

Transparent Background

Enable transparent background for setup previews when you want the object rendered without a visible world behind it.

Thumbnail Size

Use Thumbnail 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 Camera Preset for quick views like Isometric, Front, Side, Top, and 3/4, then fine-tune with Camera Rotation, Focal Length, and clip distances if needed.

Setup Preview

Setup preview lets you inspect the camera and lighting rig before committing to a full render. You can choose the sample Preview Mesh (Monkey, Cube, UV Sphere, Icosphere, Cylinder, Cone, or Torus), optionally enable Include Floor, and toggle Transparent Background.

  1. Configure your environment and camera settings.
  2. Wait briefly for Asset Forge to generate the sample preview automatically.
  3. Review the result and adjust settings as needed.
  4. 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. Produces approximate previews in minimal time. Best for bulk operations where speed matters more than visual fidelity.

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

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 Preview 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 / Catalogue

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

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

Clear Asset Previews

Removes custom preview images from the currently selected local assets in the Asset Browser, reverting them to Blender's default auto-generated previews.

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.