Content Browser
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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 (2025), 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.
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:
Starting from Dash 1.8.5, when you download assets from the FAB plugin, these assets will now be added to the new FAB view in the Dash Content Browser.
This new feature supports Megascans assets and the FBX and GLT format for other free and paid assets inside the FAB plugin. Important to note though, that it is also dependent on how the creator has shipped their assets, so some FBX/GLT assets may not show up in the new FAB view anyhow.
For the Megascans assets from FAB, you will have access to our Material Edit and Blend Material tools. These tools do not support the other FAB assets right now though.
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.
You can also use semantic search, for example "food", and get assets that are named apple, pear, can.
You can also use boolean operators as + and -. For example, searching for "Forest -Rocks" will give you all the forest-related assets but exclude all your rocks. Another example could be "Flowers +Bushes". Right now it is important to use keyword and then a space before the operator and the next keyword.
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.
As of Dash 1.9.0 we have introduced a collection system into the Dash Content Browser. This lets you organize your assets in any way you like, regardless of asset library.
Once you open up the current folder hierarchy on the left side with the folder icon in the top left corner, you will now see below your folders this new collections area. Simply press the + icon to create a new collection and then you can rename it by double clicking or right clicking on it. Then it is just a matter of drag and dropping your assets into your collections. If you hold SHIFT you can select several 3D assets and drop them all at one time. To remove one or several assets from a collection, simply drag and drop the assets onto the empty space in the collections area.
As the Dash Content Browser is designed to work great for teams working together on a UE5 project, this new collections feature does that as well. All you have to do is right-click on a collection and click "Make Shared". This will create a shared copy of said collection and this data is stored within the UE project, so no need to share any additional data with your teammates. If a teammate has made changes to a shared collection, you will see a notification and get the option to either load or overwrite those changes.
Starting from Dash 1.8.5, when you download assets from the FAB plugin, these assets will now be added to the new FAB view in the Dash Content Browser. This means you can use the FAB assets as easily as you have previously used Megascans assets from the Bridge plugin. Fab doesn't actually copy the assets in your project and instead seems to store some cached version. If you drag & drop the assets from Dash's content browser, this isn't an issue: We load the assets in your project, and everything runs smoothly from there.
This new feature supports Megascans assets and the FBX and GLT format for other free and paid assets inside the FAB plugin. Important to note, though, that it is also dependent on how the creator has shipped their assets, so some FBX/GLT assets may not show up in the new FAB view anyhow.
For the Megascans assets, you will have access to our Material Edit and Blend Material tools as you are used to when using Megascans assets from the Bridge Plugin. These tools do not support the other FAB assets right now though.
If you don't see any FAB assets in the new FAB view, it is best to double-check in the FAB plugin settings what the Cache Directory Path is, and then make sure to set this path in the Dash-Preferences Fab settings. You can find these settings by clicking the right-side menu in the FAB tab and choosing Set Folders. Then you only have to click on the paper clip icon on the row "Fab UE Cache Path" and save the path you copied from the Fab Plugin. After you have done that, there exists a reload button in the right-side menu in the Fab tab, Check New Assets.
Worth pointing out that in order to get Displacement/Tesselation working properly with the Megascans assets from FAB, you need to download the materials in High Quality as they don't ship normal Displacement maps as they did through the Bridge Plugin
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
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.
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.
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 or materials 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 (20K for enterprise users) you can tag per month. Therefore, we 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.
If you have AI tagging enabled, this means that once your assets have been computed, they are now searchable by properties and colors. Making it easier than ever before to find your assets!
Starting from Dash 1.9.0, besides meshes and blueprints, we also compute materials by default. But in case you want to disable that, you can right click on any folder and choose exclude Materials.
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. The compute is a RAM-intensive process, so it can be a good idea to not compute all of your assets at the same time.
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.
As of Dash 1.9.0, the Dash metadata that is created when you compute your assets in the Dash Content Browser is now saved directly in your Unreal Engine project, making it as easy as sharing your project to see all the Dash content browser data for any member of your team.
For those Unreal projects where you have computed assets before Dash 1.9.0, we have added an option in the Dash preferences to move the metadata from the old path directly into your Unreal project.
Dash also lets you browse, search and use content from any other project on your computer! Go to the Project Library tab, then in the menu, you can either add another project where you have computed some assets manually, or you can click Manage Project Libraries, which will bring you to the Dash preferences where you can use an automatic search for other external projects. Then you can unselect the projects you don't want shown in the Dash Content Browser.
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.
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 on how to get this library set up, and get the most out of it.
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.
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.
We go into detail about how your custom content works with Dash in .
The folder icon to expand the current content folder hierarchy.
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...
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 , but for now let's get things set up quickly:
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.
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 .
We're proud sponsors of this open source initiative, and if you find yourself enjoying their content, be sure to !
For more information on using the Centralized Asset Browser, you can check this dedicated page:
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 .
Select the curve in the viewport, and with your asset selected, to show the CTRL+Drop menu, and this time pick Scatter on Selection.
