Features

Complete reference for all Smart Asset Finder capabilities.

Semantic Search

How It Works

Smart Asset Finder uses CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training) to understand both images and text in the same 512-dimensional vector space.

Process:

Your query (e.g., “red sword”) is encoded into a 512-dim vector
Asset thumbnails are encoded into 512-dim vectors during indexing
Cosine similarity computes how “close” your query is to each asset
Results ranked by similarity score (0.0-1.0, displayed as 0-100%)

Supported Languages

Search in multiple languages:

Language	Status	Example
English	Fully tested	”red sword”
Chinese	Fully tested	”红色武器”
Japanese	Fully tested	”赤い剣”
Korean	Fully tested	”빨간 무기”
German	Fully tested	”rotes Schwert”
French	Fully tested	”épée rouge”
Spanish	Fully tested	”espada roja”
Russian	Fully tested	”красный меч”

Note: The underlying AI model (XLM-RoBERTa) supports additional languages, but only the above are tested with Unreal Editor’s input system.

Search Tips

Be descriptive:

✅ "weathered stone wall texture"
✅ "glowing blue magic crystal"
❌ "texture"
❌ "thing"

Use visual keywords:

✅ "rusty"        (describes appearance)
✅ "glowing"      (visual effect)
✅ "dark fantasy" (art style)

Try synonyms:

“sword” vs “blade”
“fire” vs “flame” vs “burning”
“stone” vs “rock”

Index Management

Building the Index

Manual Rebuild

Click Index Assets button
Scans all assets in configured paths
Replaces existing index
Use when: First-time setup, major project changes

Incremental Update

Auto-update processes changes in small batches in the background
Only reindexes new/modified assets
May cause brief editor hitching during thumbnail generation
Use when: Normal development workflow

Index Files

Location: YourProject/Saved/SmartAssetFinder/

Files:

metadata.json - Index metadata (version, timestamp, asset count)
index_data.bin - Binary feature vectors and thumbnails

Size estimate: ~100MB per 1000 assets

Index Operations

Rebuild: Replace entire index

Click: Index Assets button

Clear: Delete index (forces rebuild on next search)

Delete: Saved/SmartAssetFinder/ folder

Backup: Copy index to another location

Copy: Saved/SmartAssetFinder/ folder

Restore: Replace index with backup

Replace: Saved/SmartAssetFinder/ folder
Restart editor

Auto-Update System

Automatic Monitoring

Auto-update watches for:

New assets: Added via import or copy
Modified assets: Reimported or changed
Deleted assets: Removed from project
Renamed assets: Treated as delete + add

Monitoring Lifecycle

Detection: Asset Registry fires change event
Queueing: Asset added to update queue
Debouncing: Wait for debounce time (default 3s)
Processing: Process batch of queued assets
Indexing: Generate thumbnail + extract features
Saving: Update index on disk

Status Indicators

Button color:

🟢 Green: Enabled, idle
🟡 Yellow: Processing queued assets
⚫ Gray: Disabled

Status bar:

Auto-Update: Idle (0 pending)
Auto-Update: Processing (5 pending)
Auto-Update: Paused (PIE active)

Pause Conditions

Auto-update pauses when:

Playing in Editor (PIE): Avoids performance impact during testing
Packaging: Disabled during cook/package operations
Manually disabled: Click Auto-Update button to toggle

Queue Management

Queue limits:

Default max: 100 assets
Configurable in settings
Warns user if exceeded

Bulk imports:

Disable auto-update before importing 100+ assets
Re-enable after import completes
Click Index Assets for immediate rebuild

Asset Type Support

Supported Types

Asset Type	Priority	Thumbnail Provider
Texture2D	100	Texture2DThumbnailProvider
StaticMesh	90	StaticMeshThumbnailProvider
Material	85	MaterialThumbnailProvider
SkeletalMesh	80	SkeletalMeshThumbnailProvider
ParticleSystem (Cascade)	75	ParticleSystemThumbnailProvider
NiagaraSystem	74	NiagaraSystemThumbnailProvider

Note: MaterialInstance uses MaterialThumbnailProvider. PaperSprite uses generic provider.

Niagara Thumbnail Limitation

NiagaraSystem assets require manual thumbnail setup in the Niagara Editor. Unlike other asset types, Niagara does not auto-generate thumbnails.

To set a Niagara thumbnail:

Open the Niagara System in the editor
In the Details panel, find the Thumbnail Image property
Assign a Texture2D as the thumbnail

Assets without a manually set thumbnail will appear with a default icon in search results.

Thumbnail Generation

Process:

Load asset on GameThread
Render using UE’s ThumbnailManager
Convert BGRA → RGBA format
Resize to 224×224 pixels
Encode with CLIP image encoder

Quality: High-quality 224×224 RGBA (200KB per asset)

UI Features

View Modes

Tile View

Layout: Grid of large thumbnails
Best for: Visual browsing, art asset selection
Controls: Thumbnail size slider

Filters

Asset type filters:

Toggle individual types on/off
Shows count per type: Materials (42)
Auto-disables types not in index

Quick actions:

Select All: Enable all filters
Clear All: Disable all filters

Behavior:

Empty selection = no results (Content Browser pattern)
Changes apply instantly

Right-click any asset for:

Actions:

Open Asset: Open in appropriate editor
Find in Content Browser: Locate in Content Browser

Clipboard:

Copy Asset Path: Full object path
Copy Reference: Asset reference for code

File System:

Show in Explorer: Open containing folder

Drag & Drop

Supported targets:

Viewport (place in scene)
Material Editor (add to material graph)
Blueprint Editor (create variable/reference)
Content Browser (copy/move)

Usage: Left-click and drag asset tile to target

Thumbnail Scaling

Control: Slider in top toolbar

Range: 10% - 100% of base size (128px)

Result size: 64px - 128px thumbnails

Use case:

Large: Detailed preview, fewer visible
Small: See more results at once

Performance Features

Batch Processing

Index builds:

Process assets in configurable batches
Prevents memory spikes
Shows per-batch timing and ETA

Auto-updates:

Smaller batches for responsiveness
Queue system prevents overload
Debouncing reduces redundant work

Multi-Threading

ONNX inference:

Auto-detects CPU cores
Default: 50% of cores
Configurable: 0 (auto), 1-16 (fixed)

Async operations:

Thumbnail generation on GameThread
Feature extraction on ThreadPool
File I/O on background threads

Caching

Index persistence:

Binary format for fast load/save
Incremental saves on changes
Version-compatible format

Thumbnail cache:

Stored in index (no regeneration)
Cleared on asset reimport
Memory-efficient format

Advanced Features

Settings Integration

Configuration UI:

Integrated with UE’s DeveloperSettings
Persisted in Config/ files
Per-project settings

Access: Edit → Editor Preferences → Plugins → Smart Asset Finder

Progress Tracking

Status bar shows:

Operation name
Progress percentage
ETA (estimated time remaining)
Asset counts (recognized/pending/failed)

Progress bar:

Visual feedback during index build
Color changes on completion
Cancel button when available

Error Handling

Graceful failures:

Failed assets logged to Output Log
Continues processing remaining assets
Shows failed count in status

Common errors:

Missing thumbnail provider (logs warning, skips asset)
Asset load failure (logs error, skips asset)
ONNX inference error (logs error, skips asset)

Logging

Log categories:

LogTemp - General plugin messages
[IndexManager] - Index operations
[ProviderName] - Thumbnail provider messages

Verbosity:

Normal: Important events only
Detailed: Enable in settings for debug info

Limitations

Current Limitations

Linear search: No spatial indexing (future: Top-K optimization)
CPU only: No GPU acceleration
Visual assets only: No audio/animation support
Windows only: macOS/Linux planned
English UI: Interface in English (search is multilingual)

Not Supported

❌ Audio assets: SoundWave, SoundCue (no visual representation) ❌ Animation: AnimSequence, AnimBP (not visual search target) ❌ Blueprints: Blueprint classes (no thumbnail) ❌ Text-only search: No filename/metadata search (use Content Browser)

Next Steps

Configuration - Optimize settings
FAQ - Common questions and solutions