[RELEASED] Visual Library - A Visual Solution for Easily Locating and Importing Prefabs

Find it here! (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/visual-library-120958)

Unity Prefabs are a great tool for bringing in assets to your projects, however once you've accumulated/created more than a few it can become difficult to sort through them on your system if you want to bring them into another project.

The Unity icon is the thumbnail for and package you create and there is no visual preview available to help discern between poorly named/organized packages. The Visual Library editor extension is a simple and easy solution to this problem.

With a simple and intuitive UI you can simply search for keywords you've exported previous packages with and you will be shown a list of preview images associated with each matching package on your system. Simply click the desired preview and it will import the package directly to your project!
Here are some examples of how that looks:


The days of having to dig through directories to find your favorite unity packages (or that obscure one you created months ago but would be perfect for your current project) are gone!

The setup is simple, all you need to do is go to the settings tab and assign a root directory on your system or server that you'd like the files to go to and then you're ready to start exporting/importing your prefabs! That's it!

For convenience all settings data is generated and stored in a .txt file in the project so you can even copy that over to other projects with the extension and not have to worry about setting it up once you have your ideal settings.


Why do I need this?
Unity currently has no solution to easily view files outside of your current project, much less search your files for a specific asset you would like to bring into your project.

If you've ever had to dig through a nest of filenames and folders to find the asset you want from a large selection of assets you already own and for example wished you could type in a word like "chair", find all of your existing assets that are chairs and pick the one you want at a glance from a visual list of thumbnails, then this editor extension is for you!


Features:
- Easy and quick file management for Unity prefab assets on your server or hard-drive
- Tag based file searching
- Mouseover images to see prefab name
- Click image to directly import prefab into your current project from its file location
- Export prefabs to desired location, new or updating old ones
- Exporting generates visual thumbnail of prefab automatically as well as tag data
- Dynamic sizing search window, columns/rows adjust to editor window size
- Ability to add/save commonly used tags

Current Status:
working and fully functional, available now on the assetstore


Roadmap:
- Better UI


built and owned by The Halsey Group (http://thehalseygroupllc.com/)

 

updated post title to more clearly convey the asset functionality

 

improved the description content of the main post for better clarity

 

bumping this for visibility, checked daily, always glad to have feedback

 

bumping post for visibility