Universal Asset Preview Studio

This guide starts with installation and the quick start, then walks each feature page, the no-code Editor tools, and the scripting API. Reference and support are at the end.

⤓ Installation

Import once, open the Studio, let it index. There is nothing to add to a scene.

Requirements

• Unity 6000.0 or newer.
• Works on URP, HDRP and Built-in render pipelines.
• Optional Addressables (for the Addressables audit) and the Visual Effect Graph (for live VFX previews). Both are auto-detected and degrade gracefully when absent.

What gets installed

Assets/UniversalAssetPreviewStudio/
  Editor/         // the Studio window, views, providers, analyzers,
                  //   validation rules, exporters and the CLI (editor-only)
  Runtime/        // intentionally minimal: UapsRuntimeInfo (name/version) only
  Demo/           // WebGL-safe interactive showcase scene
  Documentation/  // You are here
  Documentation~/ // Markdown source docs (QuickStart, UserManual, API, SDK, ...)
  Tests/          // EditMode + PlayMode (run headless via UapsTestAutomation)Project

⚡ Quick Start

From a fresh import to a clean exported batch in a handful of steps.

⚙ How It Works

One index feeds a single browse / preview / validate / compare / export pipeline.

1. Index. UAPS scans the project into UapsAssetRecord entries with GUID, path, type, health, tags, collections, dependencies, reverse referencers, metrics and validation findings. Domain analyzers extract per-family signals. Updates are incremental through Unity asset post-processor events while the window is open.
2. Browse / Preview. Search and filter the index, then select an asset to load it onto the preview stage with shared camera / lighting / environment controls and live playback.
3. Validate. The active UapsValidationProfile applies its rule set and thresholds to each record and surfaces info / warning / error findings.
4. Compare. Place up to four assets side by side for metric, dependency, import-setting and validation diffs, plus a visual sheet.
5. Export. Produce PNG thumbnails, GIFs, contact sheets, documentation catalogs, dependency graphs and reports — in the UI or headless in CI.

🔍 Asset Browser

The indexed starting point for all work — search, filter, sort, organize.

Browse by name and path, or narrow with the left panel (type text, favorite state, collection, warning/error state). Select one asset for a detailed preview, or add up to four to Compare. Grid, list and presentation views are virtualized: only the visible row range plus a small overscan buffer is drawn, so very large result sets stay responsive.

Query filters

The search box accepts structured filters alongside free text. Invalid query fields are reported in the browser instead of silently matching every asset.

Sorting

Order visible results by name, type, path, package, health, triangle count, texture memory, audio duration, VFX particle count, dependency count and related browser keys. Descending sort keeps a stable ascending path tie-break for equal primary keys.

Favorites, tags & collections

• Favorites are per-user quick triage.
• Tags are flexible overlapping labels (hero, needs-review, store, low-poly). Tags added from the Studio are mirrored into the project team workspace asset so they can be shared.
• Collections are explicit asset sets or saved-query sets — release batches, store packages, client deliveries. The team workspace stores collection names, explicit GUID membership, optional saved queries, notes and export preset names.
• Saved searches in the Sources panel capture the current search text and filters; selecting one reapplies them.
• Bulk visible controls add or remove a tag or collection from the entire current filtered result set (with confirmation for large sets).

🖼 Previews

A shared preview stage with camera, lighting, environment, floor and live playback.

The selected preview panel surrounds the asset with its metadata, validation findings, dependency list and export actions. Prefabs, meshes and materials are rendered through UapsPreviewRenderPipeline.CaptureAsset when Unity can render them; other asset types fall back to provider previews, cached thumbnails, or a type-colored fallback image.

Shared preview controls

Live playback

UapsPreviewSceneAnimator advances Shuriken particle systems, samples Animator / legacy animation clips, and steps Visual Effect Graph effects (via reflection, with no hard dependency on the optional package) to a normalized timeline point before capture. CaptureAssetFrame(asset, state, size, normalizedTime) renders a single live frame, so 3D previews actually play instead of freezing at frame 0. Scene advancement is CPU-only and runs headless, though the final pixel render still needs a graphics device.

Domain-specific previews

• Audio clips use a generated waveform preview.
• Readable textures use an inspection preview with RGB over checkerboard and an alpha strip.
• Animation clips use a temporal timeline provider.
• Other assets use Unity's AssetPreview support, then fall back to a mini thumbnail or type-colored fallback.

🎥 Thumbnails & GIF

Static and animated thumbnails with caching, batch export and Project-window integration.

Thumbnails provide quick visual identification in the browser and in exported asset lists. Export thumbnails for the selected asset, or use Batch Thumbs for the entire filtered result set. Browser cells prefer cached thumbnails and Unity quick previews, so scrolling does not generate files for every asset.

Cache

• Cached PNGs include JSON sidecar metadata keyed by asset GUID, provider, import dependency hash, Unity version, color space, render pipeline, size and transparency mode.
• The Export view shows cache size and corrupt-entry count, can queue missing visible cache entries, clean invalid entries, enforce a 512 MB budget, or clear the cache.
• Use transparent PNG export for reusable catalog images.
• Window → Universal Asset Preview Studio → Project Window Thumbnails toggles cached overlays in the Project window. The overlay draws cached thumbnails only and never generates them during repaint.

Animated thumbnails & GIF

UapsAnimatedThumbnailService.GenerateFrameSequence(...) writes a bounded PNG frame sequence (maximum 24 frames at 512 px). Temporal preview providers are sampled frame-by-frame; when timeline sampling is unavailable, it emits a static fallback sequence and records a warning. Use Export Selected GIF when a short native GIF is required — UAPS keeps the source PNG frames and a manifest beside the GIF.

✅ Validation

Asset-health checks that answer one question fast: is this asset ready to preview, thumbnail and export?

The Validation view holds the active profile editor. Choose a built-in preset, assign an existing UapsValidationProfile asset, adjust grouped thresholds, apply the profile to the visible result set, reset from the preset, and save the tuned profile under Assets/ when it should live in source control.

Severity levels

Rule catalog & profiles

The built-in catalog contains 51 validation rules. Presets adjust both severity policy and thresholds over the same rule set. Available presets:

General Development Mobile Low Mobile High Desktop VR Console Asset Store Publisher UI Heavy Project VFX Heavy Project Animation Library

For example, Mobile Low flags smaller textures, lower mesh budgets and lower particle counts than Desktop; UI Heavy relaxes UI thresholds; VFX Heavy relaxes VFX thresholds; Animation Library relaxes animation/controller thresholds. Project profiles can also override rule severities, disable rules, set a minimum severity and decide whether package assets are included.

Typical checks

• Missing scripts, missing material slots, materials with missing shaders.
• Oversized textures, read/write enabled, missing mipmaps on large textures, non-power-of-two or apparently uncompressed formats, high texture memory.
• High mesh triangle / submesh / blend-shape / bone counts, meshes without UV channels, high-poly prefabs without an LODGroup.
• High material slot or shader-keyword counts, transparent / late render queues, incomplete basic PBR on lit materials.
• Long audio clips with expensive load settings, high sample rates, stereo use, clipping risk or high memory estimates.
• High particle budgets, particle-system / trail / line counts, and estimated VFX overdraw.
• Large prefab component / collider / rigidbody / light / camera / AudioSource / Animator counts and high draw-call proxies.
• Dense animation curve data, high event counts, looping root-motion mismatch, animator empty states and controller complexity.
• UI prefabs with many raycast targets, layout groups or canvases, and missing responsive anchors.
• High dependency counts; Shader Graph / VFX Graph error or missing-text signals; duplicate Addressables addresses.

🕸 Dependency Graph

Explore the selected asset's dependencies and reverse referencers, then export.

The Dependency Graph view supports traversal depth, incoming / outgoing toggles, type and path filtering, a draggable in-window node canvas, node expand/collapse controls, node summaries, labeled edges, and select / ping actions. The index records direct dependencies and reverse referencers for indexed assets, so graphs can show incoming reference edges where that data is available.

Exporting

Export from the Export view or headless with UapsCli.ExportDependencyGraph; the underlying service is UapsDependencyGraphService.

⚖ Comparison

Place up to four assets side by side with metric, dependency, import and visual diffs.

Compare view holds up to four assets. Each card shows the preview, type, health and a metric summary, and the view builds metric, dependency, import-setting and validation diffs.

Linked preview state

Camera and playback sync toggles drive a shared comparison preview state for compatible assets. Linked yaw, pitch, FOV, padding, render mode, environment and playback scrub values are applied to built-in captures and to providers that implement the stateful or temporal preview contracts. Assets without those capabilities fall back to their normal preview behavior and report compatibility notes.

Export

• Export Report writes a Markdown comparison report (metric / import / dependency / validation diffs).
• Export Visual Sheet writes a PNG sheet with side-by-side preview cells, health and metric bands, and a first-asset-versus-each-other diff heatmap row.

📦 Package & Addressables Audit

Quick project-structure and Addressables checks, in the UI or headless.

Package audit

The package audit reads Packages/manifest.json and reports dependency counts, Unity package/module counts, whether URP is present, and whether the Addressables package is installed. Run it headless with UapsCli.PackageAudit (UapsPackageAnalyzer underneath).

Addressables audit

Addressable status on indexed assets is detected from labels and common folder names. When the Addressables package is installed, UapsAddressablesAnalyzer uses reflection to report groups, entries, duplicate addresses and missing asset references; it also has a YAML fallback that scans Assets/AddressableAssetsData when present. Detailed bundle layout and remote/local risk simulation remain limited.

Release readiness & clean-import audits

• The release-readiness report (UapsReleaseReadinessValidator) checks for required package structure, docs, tests, samples and core artifacts. UapsCli.ReleaseReadiness exits with a non-zero code when blocking errors are found, so CI release gates fail correctly.
• The clean-import audit (UapsCleanImportAuditor) reports whether the package root, asmdefs, docs, samples, tests, editor scripts and runtime scripts are present before a clean-project import pass.

🤖 Headless / CI

Run the same pipelines in batchmode for continuous integration.

Invoke entry points with Unity -batchmode -nographics -projectPath <project> -executeMethod <method>. The CLI surface lives in UapsCli, and test automation in UapsTestAutomation.

Entry points

Example commands

# Validation report
Unity.exe -batchmode -nographics -quit -projectPath "<project>" \
  -executeMethod UniversalAssetPreviewStudio.UapsCli.RunValidation \
  -uapsOutput "UAPSReports/validation.json"

# Contact sheet
Unity.exe -batchmode -nographics -quit -projectPath "<project>" \
  -executeMethod UniversalAssetPreviewStudio.UapsCli.ExportContactSheet \
  -uapsOutput "UAPSReports/contact-sheet.png" -uapsSize 160 -uapsColumns 4 -uapsMaxItems 64

# Animated media (GIF) for one clip
Unity.exe -batchmode -nographics -quit -projectPath "<project>" \
  -executeMethod UniversalAssetPreviewStudio.UapsCli.ExportMedia \
  -uapsAssetPath "Assets/MyClip.anim" -uapsOutput "UAPSReports/media" \
  -uapsFormat gif -uapsFrames 24 -uapsSize 256

# Test automation
Unity.exe -batchmode -nographics -projectPath "<project>" \
  -executeMethod UniversalAssetPreviewStudio.UapsTestAutomation.RunEditMode \
  -uapsOutput "TestResults/uaps-editmode.xml"Shell

🔧 Editor Tools / No-Code

Everything UAPS does is reachable from menus, windows and Create-asset entries — no scripting required.

Windows & menus

No-code authoring assets

Create configuration as ScriptableObjects (with inspector tooltips) from Assets → Create → Universal Asset Preview Studio:

The Welcome window & Getting Started scene

On first import the Welcome window auto-opens once to orient new users toward opening the Studio, the documentation and the onboarding scene. It is dismissible and can always be re-opened from the menu. It is informational only — nothing about your project changes when it shows.

The Getting Started scene (Window → … → Getting Started Scene) is a self-contained onboarding scene: it shows an always-visible guidance card with the three-step quick start, and a ★ START HERE object whose Inspector turns into a launcher — one click opens the Studio, the documentation, the interactive demo or the Welcome window. Regenerate it any time from Tools → Universal Asset Preview Studio → Demo → Rebuild Welcome Scene.

🧩 Asset Type Modules

One index and shared pipeline, with domain-specific metadata and validation layered over each asset family.

📙 Scripting API

The extension surface lives in the UniversalAssetPreviewStudio namespace. Treat public editor APIs as package contracts.

Registry

UapsRegistry stores editor extension implementations. Registration deduplicates by ID where one exists, otherwise by implementation type.

using UniversalAssetPreviewStudio;

UapsRegistry.RegisterPreviewProvider(new MyPreviewProvider());
UapsRegistry.RegisterMetadataExtractor(new MyExtractor());
UapsRegistry.RegisterValidationRule(new MyRule());
UapsRegistry.RegisterExportAction(new MyExportAction());C#

Extension contracts

Key entry classes

Built-in providers

UapsAudioWaveformPreviewProvider, UapsAnimationTimelinePreviewProvider, UapsTextureInspectorPreviewProvider, UapsLiveSceneTemporalProvider (live prefab/model playback, priority 50) and UapsDefaultPreviewProvider. Analyzers include UapsAnimationAnalyzer, UapsAnimatorControllerAnalyzer, UapsRetargetAnalyzer, UapsVfxAnalyzer, UapsMaterialAnalyzer, UapsTextureAnalyzer, UapsAudioAnalyzer, UapsUiAnalyzer, UapsAddressablesAnalyzer and UapsGraphAssetAnalyzer.

💡 Troubleshooting

The issues that come up most, and how to resolve them.

❓ FAQ

Quick answers to the questions that come up most.

📬 Support

Need help? We're here for you.