About Assets

Assets are data that exist outside an experience. They are usually created with external design apps.

This page discusses:

Types of Assets
Insert Assets
Manage Asset Properties
Manage Assets
Reassign Assets Links
Export Assets

Types of Assets

In Creative Experience, you can use various external assets to enhance the content of an experience.

The following table shows the types of assets and how you can use them in Creative Experience.


Asset Type	Corresponding Experience Object	Override Values	Can Be Created from the App	Can Be Updated in the App	Can Be Opened from the App	Can Be Associated with New Actors
Physical Product	Product Actor				^*	
Ambience Environment	Ambience					
Planetary Environment	Planets					
Realtime Human	Human					
Covering Material	Material Resource					
VPM Document	Image Resource				—^**	

Notes:

^*: you can also explore the asset in the experience.
^**: you can only explore the asset in the experience.

Insert Assets

To use assets in an experience, you need to insert the existing assets (except humans and materials that you can create from an experience.)

In the following example, E is an experience. When you insert assets (A₁ and A₂), experience objects (O₁ and O₂) appear. Experience objects are highlighted in the tree and they reference their assets. If you delete an experience object, its associated asset still exists in the platform (D).

Manage Asset Properties

When you insert an asset in an experience, you may want to customize the asset for a specific use in the experience context.

Properties Override

You can override some asset's properties in an experience.

In the following example, the asset (A₁) is inserted in an experience and the created object experience (O₁) is an environment.

By default, the object experience (O₁) has the same name as the asset.

In the experience, two changes occurred without affecting the asset:

The environment is renamed to MyAmbience.
The Dome Radius property is set to 3000.

New values are only stored in the experience.


Asset (A₁)	Environment (O₁)
Name: AmbienceA	Name: MyAmbience
Dome radius: 5000	Dome radius: 3000
Exposure: 0	Exposure: 0

Properties Update

If you modify the asset's properties in another design app, the changes are automatically reflected in the experience.

In the following example, the Exposure property of the asset is now set to 1. In the experience, the Exposure property of the environment is updated accordingly.

However, the Dome Radius value that is overridden remains the same in the experience.


Asset (A₁)	Environment (O₁)
Name: AmbienceA	Name: MyAmbience
Dome radius: 5000	Dome radius: 3000
Exposure: 1	Exposure: 1

Manage Assets

You can open an asset in another app or in Product Finder.

In the Properties panel, under General and next to the Asset property, click Context menu and do one the following:

To open the asset in another app, select Open.
To explore the asset in Product Finder, select Explore Asset.
To associate a new asset with an actor, select Reassign.

Note: The commands described above are not available with all types of assets.

Reassign Assets Links

You can associate a new asset with a product actor by selecting Reassign in the Properties panel of the product actor. During the update, some links can break. For more information, see Managing Broken Asset Links.

Note: The product actor's position remains unchanged during the reassignment process. However, the new product may appear at a different place in the 3D area if the new product has a different referential from the original product.

Export Assets

When you export an experience, assets that are linked with experience objects are stored in the 3D XML file.