Asset Catalog
Asset Catalog
Every model, image, sound, and video a table can draw on lives in a shared asset catalog. Assets in the top bar opens the browser over it: pick a row to inspect and preview it, drag files in to add them, and rename or delete the ones you own.
The Assets page is a catalog browser and nothing more — it doesn’t run a table, which is why it opens fast and stays useful whatever else you have going. The trade-off is that on its own it lists uploaded media only. To browse what the running table already knows about as well, open the catalog from the table page.
Opening the catalog
| Where | What it lists |
|---|---|
| Assets in the top bar of any page but the table | Uploaded media only — the standalone page |
| Assets in the top bar of the table page | Every inventory — uploaded media, the live table’s own, and saved fragments — docked in the side tray beside the playfield. Ctrl/⌘-click instead to reach the standalone page |
| Bind asset… on a device in the Object Editor | Every inventory — uploaded media, the live table’s own, and saved fragments — with a Use asset button |
| Browse… on an asset parameter in the Lightshow Editor | Uploaded images only: a lightshow asset parameter is a picture source, so the picker is narrowed to that one family |
It’s the same browser in all four places — only the inventory it’s pointed at differs — so the gestures below work the same wherever you opened it.
The docked copy is the one panel that never leaves the tray: the live table’s inventory only exists on the page the table is running on, so there is nowhere to pop it out to.
What the catalog holds
Rows are grouped by family, in a fixed order:
| Group | What’s in it |
|---|---|
| Models | Uploaded 3D geometry — .glb, .gltf, .obj, .stl |
| Images | Uploaded artwork and textures |
| Audio | Uploaded sound files |
| Video | Uploaded video |
| Synth patches | Patches the live table defines |
| Clips | Audio clips the table declares as sources |
| Playlists | Playlist sources on the table |
| Lightshows | Shows authored on the table |
| Triggers | The table’s clip-selection scopes |
| Fragments | Saved reusable wiring — no bytes at all |
The first four are things you upload. The rest are things the running table already knows about, so they show up only where a table is attached — the docked browser and Bind asset… — and never on the standalone Assets page or in a kind-filtered picker like the lightshow editor’s.
Only uploaded rows have bytes behind them, so only they can be renamed, deleted, or previewed from their file. A live-table row is inspected and bound instead, and offers whatever actions its own editor provides — a lightshow row, for example, jumps you into the Lightshow Editor.
Finding an asset
- Filter assets… at the top narrows the list as you type.
- Family groups start expanded. Collapsing one is a working gesture, not a saved preference: re-reading the list — Refresh, More…, or a reload — opens every group again.
- Arrow keys move the cursor; ← and → collapse and expand a group; Home and End jump to the ends.
- The footer counts what’s loaded, with More… when there’s another page to fetch.
- Refresh re-reads the catalog — useful after someone else uploads.
- Only mine appears when you’re signed in, and hides other people’s public assets so your own uploads aren’t buried in a busy catalog.
Inspecting and previewing
Selecting a row fills the pane on the right with its name, kind, file type, and size, plus pixel dimensions or duration where those apply, and the start of the content hash that identifies the bytes.
What you get to look at depends on the family:
- Images preview as soon as you select them.
- Models open in a 3D viewer — drag to orbit, scroll to zoom. If the model carries animations, their names are listed under the preview.
- Audio and video show a Load preview button; clicking it fetches the file and gives you a player, so browsing a big catalog doesn’t download everything you click past.
Uploading
Three gestures do the same thing: the Upload… button, dropping files onto the browser, and pasting them from the clipboard.
Images, audio, video, and .glb / .gltf / .obj / .stl models are accepted.
Folders aren’t — drop the files themselves. Anything refused says why in the
status line instead of vanishing, and while the browser is open a stray file drop
anywhere on the page can’t navigate the tab away from your session.
Files are prepared on the way in:
- Oversized images are scaled down to 2048 pixels on the long edge, and a thumbnail is generated for the browser.
- A compressed model may be decompressed as it uploads, which makes it land larger than the file you picked. The status line says so, so the size in the detail pane isn’t a surprise.
A batch keeps going when one file fails. If exactly one file fails, the status line names it and says why. If several do, it reports how many of the batch failed and quotes only the first — so a partly successful drop tells you it was partial without naming every casualty. The list re-reads itself either way, so what did land is on screen to compare against. The catalog enforces its own per-kind size and tag limits; those, and the errors they produce, are listed in the Assets HTTP API.
Signing in
Browsing needs no account: the default listing is everything you’re allowed to see — your own assets, public ones, and anything shared with you.
Uploading, renaming, and deleting do need one. Sign in from the control at the right of the top bar; until you do, the browser is read-only and says so.
Renaming and deleting
With a row selected — or from its right-click menu — Rename… changes the name the catalog shows, and Delete removes the asset. Deleting asks first, and warns that tables still referencing the asset will render placeholders where it used to be.
If the asset is used by a published table, the first delete is refused and the question comes back naming those tables: deleting anyway unpublishes them, so anyone you shared a link with loses access rather than seeing a half-rendered table.