How to get the Blender asset manager installed and working
Intro
Our asset manager uses the new Blender Extensions feature to allow users to connect directly to iMeshh so they can download and install the addon remotely without needing to ever download any .zips.
This also allows users to get frequent updates directly from within Blender. We highly recommend users follow this set-up to get connected
Installation using our online repository – It’s the best way!
Follow these quick easy steps to get going!
- Open Blender 4.2+
- Go to Edit>Preferences>Get Extensions
- Then click Repositories in the top right corner
- Click + and click “Add Remote Repository”
- Click Check for Updates on Start-up and then click Create
- Search iMeshh in the search bar while in Extensions and click Install
- Go to Add-Ons and Search iMeshh and your new addon will display!
- NOTE: You may need to restart Blender if things are not loading correctly
- Log in! See log in detail below
Local Asset Management
We know most users have their own asset libraries, so we designed the addon to keep everything in one place. At the top, you’ll find a “Local” tab, which organizes and displays your assets based on your computer’s folder structure.
How to add your own folders
- Inside the preferences panel navigate to the Paths tab
- Here we can click the + icon and we can choose any folder we like which contains any .blend file
- Then we want to Define the Folder Type and Specify what’s inside the folder: Objects, Materials, HDRIs, Geo-Nodes or Effects.
- How Each Asset Type Behaves
- 3D Models → Appended into the scene.
- Materials → Appended and applied to the selected object.
- Geometry Nodes & FX → Appended into the scene.
- HDRIs → Applied directly to the world nodes.
- How Each Asset Type Behaves
- Once we add all the folders we like, we can then see them inside the addon
Using the HDRI tool
We kept our original HDRI tool which our users loved from our previous asset manager.
To access this, click “Apply” on the HDRI you want and then click the “settings” icon.
This will pull up a pop-up panel allowing you to adjust a variety of parameters from directly within this tool without having to go to the world settings tab.
How to structure your folders
While we tried to be quite flexible, there are a couple things to consider.
- Thumbnails will only display if there is an image file with the exact same name as the .blend file
- Folders can be as deep as you like, the addon will use your systems folder structure
Why not use the asset browser instead?
In Blender, adding an object to the Asset Browser requires opening every file and preparing it first. This can be inconvenient, especially for professionals who already have extensive asset libraries—often thousands of assets—organized in their own file structures. Since these assets are already categorized effectively, why not use the existing system?
Another limitation we’ve encountered is how Blender handles .blend files in an asset library. When a file contains multiple assets, such as a decorative set with 10–20 individual items, we typically want to import everything at once. However, Blender’s Asset Browser doesn’t support parented objects (as of writing), meaning we must mark the entire collection as an asset. When importing, this requires an extra step: using Make Instances Real before any edits can be made.
While the Asset Browser is a great tool, it doesn’t fully align with our workflow. We prefer to save assets as separate files and import them directly, as is standard in Archviz and many other industries. If the Asset Browser works for you, that’s great—it’s certainly a fast and efficient tool—but for our needs, the traditional method remains the best fit.
Google & Facebook Login
At the time of making this, Google and Facebook login is not supported. So you’ll need to set up your own password.
- Click Reset Password
- Enter your email address
- Click on the email to reset password – This may take several minutes to arrive
- Enter your new password and click save
- Now just enter your new password into the preferences panel
Using The Search
Our search is LIGHTENING fast. I recommend every user makes full use of it.
One thing to note: this is a GLOBAL SEARCH, not filtered by tabs.
If you want to filter for a specific type of asset, you can enable the folder option and choose the type of object you’d like to view.
Jump to a specific page with SHIFT+LMB on any page number
If you know the exact page you want to go to, hold SHIFT and LMB click on one of the page numbers. This will bring up a pop-up box letting you input the specific page number
Troubleshooting
Can I use my already downloaded iMeshh assets in the addon?
If you used iMeshh before this addon was available, you’ll need to re-download everything through the addon. All new files have been slightly updated
to make sure their format is recognized by the addon. Luckily this addon should make the process very smooth!
Nothing is loading
If you get a screen which says Fetching but nothing happens like this:
Then please either close and reopen Blender or try clicking this refresh button. This may still take a couple of minutes to display. It is downloading all product meta-data.
My images are not loading
If you viewer is not loading like the image below then please try these options:
- Click the Reload button as in the option above.
- Try going to another page
- Use the scroll wheel while you are on the page. It may have loaded but it needs user input to trigger the update
- Restart Blender
- In rare cases, our server may think you are a bot and limit your interactions. If nothing happens at all, you may need to close blender and come back to it a little bit later so our server has time to refresh.
I downloaded a product but it still says “Download”
This is unfortunately an error on our part, please email us or contact us on Discord to let us know. We will fix this ASAP!
I keep getting “Download limit reached”
We have put in place a download limit for all products. However we understand most users are genuine and with this new addon they are probably re-downloading everything again.
So if this happens please reach out to us with the contact form at the bottom of this page: https://imeshh.com/index.php/faq/
Where are my files saved?
1. Your main file locations for your ASSETS can be chosen here. Generally it is good practice to keep different asset types separate from all your suppliers, but you can add all of these into one folder if you like!
2. The second file location for the addon TECHNICAL DATA can be found in this folder: C:\Users\YOUR USER\imeshh – This folder is a special folder which you should not need to touch.
In some cases you may need to delete this folder if something is not loading or updating, this should trigger the addon to re-download the required files
The extension files themselves can be found in this folder: C:\Users\YOUR USER\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\4.2\extensions\extensions_imeshh_com
If you’re having issues, you may need to entirely delete this folder when re-installing. However this should rarely (if ever) be required
Could the dev make a script so all earlier downloaded files would automatically categorized according to the new addon. This means gigabytes of data. Your server is going take a hit and it’s also kinda unfriendly for the user if I’m honest.
I bet this is due to the folder hoerachy. Have you tried doing this automated through python?
Hi,
We tried many different things, however it appears a lot of our assets had gained slight variations over time which was impossible to manage in the addon. If we made a new python tool to automatically fix them, we would need to find all potential slight variations of all assets and tell it how to manage all. We started doing this ourselves,but found it was becoming impossible to manage and it was seemingly endless. So we decided just to fix all assets ourselves and ask users to re-download everything.
We moved our distribution for assets to a new platform which won’t suffer from any hit so not to worry there.
We understand it is a pain but we hope the pure speed and efficiency of the new addon will greatly improve peoples workflows going forward. Unfortunately we needed this one huge reset 🙁 I hope you can understand.
Ps in this guide, it shows imess files are located under username/imesh but in the screenshot example it shows username/documents/imesh?
The first image shows the file paths which you can manually choose. This is where you personally save your assets. This could be any drive, in this case it was “username/documents/imeshh”.
The second image shows this path “C:\Users\YOUR USER\imeshh” which is the technical folder for the asset which we do not want users to touch. We have not added the ability yet for users to choose the desired folder for this.
I understand the confusion and I’ll edit it to make it clearer 🙂