The "Content" button on the Dash bar opens the Content Browser. Why use this instead of UE's native content browser?
Dash is rich with lots of tools that rely on content, and making it easy to blend the content & the tools is a top priority for us. For example, you should be able to just drag a plant from our Content Browser onto the viewport, then hold CTRL+Release your mouse, and scatter it, or make vines out of it, or scatter it along a spline in case it's a lamp post, etc...
People often have content they built, content from Megascans, Dekogon, Sierra Division, PolyHaven, some free asset pack of the month, etc...
We've built dedicated features for Megascans & PolyHaven, and are actively working to extend support for more content creators/libraries. This means better/faster interaction with those libraries.
Your own content can be hard to sift through, and we've integrated a world-class AI tagging solution to make all your objects easy to find.
We've also made it possible to browse & import all content from all your projects inside the one you're current working with!
Later in the year (2024), you'll be able to not just browse local but also free or paid content, and purchase it right from this panel. This will make content acquisition an afterthought, as you no longer have to go through the UE Marketplace, or Gumroad, or any of the billion other variants that sell content packs. Just type "barrel", see the one you like, buy it for a few bucks, and that's it.
Basics
The Content Browser is split into 4 vertical slices:
The top one has its title, then a dropdown containing all the libraries we currently support:
Megascans is a massive scan library of 18K+ assets, created by the team Quixel, which was acquired by Epic Games in 2019.
You have access to regular 3D objects like rocks or trash cans, tillable surfaces like forest grounds and brick walls, 3d plants, atlas textures, decals, and much more.
We've written an extensive guide on how to get this library set up, and get the most out of it.
We've built a fairly big materials library, and most of them are tailored for Megascans, but we'll make them work for more libraries in the future, too.
PolyHaven is an open source PBR asset library, comprising of high quality 3D assets, HDRIs, and tillable textures.
The HDRIs alone make this library a must have for anyone creating environments with Dash.
There are some assets that are built specifically for Blender, which means they won't work nicely in Dash. Trees are such assets, as they seem to use geometry nodes for their leaves.
IES Library gives you access to high quality lighting information presets. Think of it like the shape of the light that's emitted by light fixtures. The linked website is a repository of such shapes, all provided by manufacturers, and ready to use to make your scene shine.
Dash gives you the ability to browse all your 3D assets and materials in its content browser.
Not only that, you can also use its AI tagging capabilities to make your content easier to search through.
Unlike Megascans or PolyHaven, when you drag & drop one of your assets from Dash onto the viewport, its material will remain the one you originally assigned to the asset, instead of one we automatically assign to it.
We go into detail about how your custom content works with Dash in this page.
In addition to browsing the content of your current project, you also have the ability to browse the assets of other Unreal Engine projects that reside on your computer!
This feature is easy to set up, just follow the quick guide right here.
This library will display all the assets in all the views in one place. You could for example have some great assets in PolyHaven, some in Megascans and some in another UE project, and this view would allow you to see them all in one place.
Next, you have (from left to right):
The search bar in which you can type keywords such as object names or object colors. Some examples: rusty bucket, red carpet, car, rock, stone, garbage, damaged, etc...
The next slice is a simple notification area that's also specific to your current library. It shows a simple message about the library your currently in, and if available, one or multiple buttons that may be of use for that specific library.
Finally, you've got the library itself; which is a typical thumbnail grid that you can scroll through to view all your assets.
Megascans
Megascans is a high-end content library that's available for free to all Unreal Engine users.
It features nearly 15,000 assets, with various subcategories: 3D objects, decals, surfaces, 3D plants, etc...
We've got an extensive guide on this library right here, but for now let's get things set up quickly:
First, you need to make sure that you've downloaded some assets through the Quixel Bridge plugin, which is natively available in UE5.
Once you've downloaded some, Right-Click on an asset, then Go to Files, and copy the parent folder, which usually looks like R:\Megascans Library\Downloaded\UAssets
The Preferences panel will open up, and from there, set the Bridge Plugin Path to the path you've copied before. You'll notice that there's a second path Bridge Software Path, which allows you to add support for Atlases, an asset type that's available in the Bridge standalone software, but not the UE plugin. More on that here.
Hit Save, and that should do it! Dash's Content Browser should now start to fill up with all your Megascans assets. If it doesn't, restart UE and see if it works. Worst case, reach out to us.
Why use Dash for Megascans instead of the native Bridge plugin?
Navigating content from Megascans, Polyhaven, your own, some marketplace's, etc... can be quite the time sink. In an ideal world, if you were looking for a chair or a rock, you'd just type "chair" or "rock", and find the content you need, regardless of its origin or even naming quality. That ideal world exists, and it's called Dash.
Can I download Megascans assets inside Dash?
Unfortunately you can't. Quixel Bridge doesn't have a public API that makes it easy for us to distribute their content, which means you'll have to download the assets in the Bridge plugin for them to be available in Dash.
Can I import content for the Bridge standalone software?
Dash only supports the Atlas asset type from the Bridge software.
We're planning to add support for regular FBX/OBJ import to remedy this problem, but that isn't available yet.
Polyhaven
This free & open source library provides high quality content that you can download right inside Dash. Using it is fairly simple: Switch to this library in the dropdown, then click on the download icon on the asset of your choice to download it. Once the download is done, drag & drop it onto your scene, and voilà.
The folder in which Polyhaven content gets downloaded is automatically set by Dash, though you can change it by going into the Preferences -> Path Settings section.
We're proud sponsors of this open source initiative, and if you find yourself enjoying their content, be sure to donate!
Some Polyhaven assets don't seem to work. Why?
There are some assets like trees which are built for Blender primarily, making them hard to automatatically set up in Unreal Engine. Most of the content should work, but if something's off, chances are the content is just not easy to import in UE.
My thumbnails aren't showing / I can't seem to download assets in Polyhaven
If the thumbnails are not loading or you're unable to download the assets, try this:
Close UE5
Delete this folder ..documents\PolygonFlow\ContentLibrary\PolyHaven
Open UE 5and start Dash, then open the Content Browser.
Go to Polyhaven library menu and click Redownload library data.
Once the library is populated, try to download the assets again.
If this fails, please reach out to us on Discord or at info@polygonflow.io
Current Project
Why would you use Dash to browse your local content, when UE's content browser is right there?
Because Dash makes it more convenient to sift through your content by using AI to tag all your content, making it easy to sift through, no matter how good or bad the naming convention might be.
Most importantly though, Dash's Content Browser aims to be a unified space to navigate all your assets. This includes local content, Megascans, content from other projects, etc...
If you click on the libraries dropdown and go to Current Project, this is what the view will look like:
The folder hierarchy on the left is the one you have in the UE content browser, and the count on each is the number of static meshes available in the folders. If you click on a folder, a button will show up suggesting you to compute the assets in the folder, and use AI to tag them. You can enable or disable AI tagging by using the checkmark within the compute button.
Why would you disable tagging? Tagging is a financially costly process for us, which means we have to limit it to 4000 assets (10K for enterprise users) you can tag per month. Therefore you recommend you to tag the assets you'll need by picking specific folders and tagging them, vs processing everything.
You could for example compute everything, then tag the folders whose content you want to tag.
We only compute static meshes by default, though you can also compute materials. To do it, locate the specific folder that contains your materials in Dash's Content Browser folder view, then right-click on the folder, and select Include Materials. An icon will show up to indicate that the folder will now have its materials computer.
The computing process takes time, as we load your assets into memory and render thumbnails out of them, then use OpenAI's vision API to extract relevant tags from each asset. It's a RAM-intensive process, and the more RAM you have, the less time it takes.
If an asset fails to compute, its thumbnail will have some info informing you of that, and you can recompute it by right clicking on it, and clicking Recompute.
I've computed some assets, but it's taking too long
The computation process takes a lot of time right now, as we have to load up all your assets into a headless UE5 instance, render a thumbnail, then go to the next. The amount of assets you have could be well above the amount your RAM's limit, for example.
We've made a couple of contingencies like gracefully stopping the process and allowing you to restart it, but most importantly, we recommend computing assets in batches, like computing 100-250 assets in a specific folder, then moving to then next, etc...
A restart of UE would also help, as that clears it from your RAM.
Can I tag more than the monthly limit?
We don't have any clean way of increasing your tagging limit for now.
We're looking to introduce some top-up plan in the near future, but for now, reaching out to us on Discord/email to request an increase in your limit is the only available option.
What asset types can I compute?
Static meshes and materials are currently supported. We're planning to expand to more asset types like custom blueprints in the future.
Can I clear my computed assets?
Yes. Make sure you're in the "Current Project" in the Content Browser, then go to the menu, and click Delete Cache.
How do I compute materials?
External Projects
Dash also lets you browse content from any other project in your computer!
Go to the Current Project, then in the menu, select the option Manage External Library.
You'll be shown the preferences window, and in there you can add the path of any UE project you have locally. You can add as many as you want, too.
UE5 is forward compatible, but not backward. In the case of browsing external content, this means that if your current project is in UE5.3, you'll be able to access the content of all versions below it, but not above it.
FAQ
How do I show the asset names?
Yes, if you click on the Content Browser's menu (dots icon, top right corner of the content browser), there's an option to view asset names.
Can I view the asset's details before importing it?
Yes, if you click on the Content Browser's menu (dots icon, top right corner of the content browser), there's an option to view asset details. Once it's enabled, selecting on any given asset will show the you following properties about it:
Texture resolution.
Triangle count.
Asset scale. This is represented by a square with a character for reference, and hovering over that scale will display the width x height x depth scale.
Can I make the thumbnails bigger?
Yes, hold CTRL with your mouse over the Content Browser's view, then use the scroll wheel to scale the thumbnails up or down.
Can I view the triangle count of an asset before importing it?
Yes, if you click on the Content Browser's menu (dots icon, top right corner of the content browser), there's an option to view asset details, which will ensure that the triangle count of that asset is visible when you click on it.
How to use the Favorites feature?
On hover, every asset will show you a star icon to set or unset an asset as favorite. Once you have some assets that are set as favorite, a star icon will show up on the right corner of the Content Browser's search bar. Click on it, and all your favorite assets will show up at the top.
Can I edit an asset's tags?
Yes, right-click on the asset, then select Asset Details, and a panel will open up, showing all the asset's details, including a list of tags it has.
You can then start typing in tags, then hitting enter to register them, or hover over them, and double-click on the X icon to the right of each tag to delete it.
Once you're happy with your changes, hit the Save button at the bottom left.
Can I add or remove tags to multiple assets at once?
Yes. Use SHIFT+Click to select multiple assets, right-click on any of them, then select Batch Tag Edit. This will open up a panel in which all the tags of all the assets are visible, and any new tag you add will get added to all of them. Any tag you remove will also get removed from all of them.
Once you're happy with your changes, hit the Save button at the bottom left.
There's a specific asset I like; how do I view more assets similar to it?
Right-click on it, then select View Similar, and that should display all the assets that are similar to yours.
I can't seem to get the CTRL + Drop right to scatter from the Content Browser
Click (or SHIFT+Click for multiple objects) on an asset, then start dragging it onto the viewport. You'll notice the Content Browser will shrink in size to give your viewport more space.
Before releasing the left-mouse button, hold CTRL, then release. And you should see a menu pop up with a couple of options, including one to scatter.
Do I need the Content Browser to scatter assets?
No. Dash's Content Browser is a highly convenient way of managing your content, but all our scatter tools work without it, too. We briefly cover the scatter workflow right here.
How to scatter along a curve when drag & dropping from the Content Browser?
Select the curve in the viewport, and with your asset selected, follow this step to show the CTRL+Drop menu, and this time pick Scatter on Selection.
The folder icon to expand the current content folder hierarchy.
Then you have the Favorites icon . If you hover on some asset, it'll show up on their thumbnail. Setting an asset to favorite, then clicking on the Favorites icon near the search bar will ensure that all your favorites assets show up on top.
Then you've got the dotted menu icon , which opens the settings of the current library you're viewing. Each library has some specific settings. For example, Megascans has an option to set your Bridge plugin and Bridge standalone paths, whilst the Current Project library has an option to add libraries from other Unreal Engine projects on your computer, etc...
Open the Content Browser, then switch the dropdown to Megascans, and click on the menu icon to open the library's settings. There, click on Set Megascans Folders.
