Effectively managing digital assets is essential for keeping workflows organized and efficient, particularly as projects scale and involve multiple team members or external contributors.
Unity's Asset Manager is a user-friendly digital asset management platform supporting over 70 file formats to help teams centralize, organize, discover, and use assets seamlessly across projects. It reduces redundant work by design, making cross-team collaboration smoother and accelerating production workflows.
An important part of asset management is moving assets in and out of Asset Manager. To facilitate this process, Unity provides multiple methods that fall into two main categories:
This article provides an explanation of the different methods with the aim to help you select which one works best for your needs.
The web interface
The web-based interface for Asset Manager allows you to manage, view, and organize assets through your browser. It serves as a centralized hub for team collaboration, providing flexible options for adding assets – whether individually or in bulk – and organizing them into collections.
The web interface amplifies discoverability and enables asynchronous, speedy collaboration among all relevant stakeholders in modern digital transformation projects.
You can enrich assets with custom metadata, where admins, owners, and managers can define new metadata fields – like text, Boolean, and numeric field types – while all users can add tags (including AI-suggested tags) for better organization.
Via the web interface, you can create and manage collections, move assets between collections or projects, and track changes to the assets with version history. The Dependency Viewer reveals asset relationships at a glance, showing what each asset needs and what depends on it. Both upstream and downstream dependencies are available in the Dependency Viewer.
Assets are securely protected by default, ensuring your work remains private. As a project owner/manager, you control access by simply adding users with appropriate roles through the project details. This streamlined security workflow ensures assets remain protected until you enable collaboration, giving you confidence while sharing valuable work.
Additionally, you can use the Optimize and Convert feature, a built-in pipeline for 3D file optimization and format conversion. The Asset Optimization tools help resolve mesh issues, intelligently merge meshes, and reduce polygon counts for improved performance. Meanwhile, the File Conversion feature allows seamless transformation of assets into formats like FBX, GLB, OBJ, and CAD, ensuring compatibility across different workflows.
Unity Editor integration
The Unity Asset Manager package integrates directly with the Unity Editor, allowing you to manage assets without disrupting your workflow. After installation, you can upload assets to, and import them from, the Unity Cloud, as well as access assets from all your projects through the Editor's search interface.
Filter assets by creator, status, type, update time and import status, which helps locate specific resources efficiently. The plugin automatically detects dependencies across assets – for example, if multiple prefabs use the same material, only one instance of the material is uploaded. This ensures optimized storage and prevents unnecessary duplication.
This integration works well for Editor-focused workflows, especially when team members frequently iterate on assets. You can reuse assets from previous projects and ensure you're working with the latest versions. By centralizing asset organization, you reduce duplicate work and maintain consistency across your projects.
Pixyz Studio integration
The Pixyz Studio integration with Asset Manager enables uploading of prepared 3D scenes for storage, sharing, and further transformation.
Within Pixyz Studio, you can import and assemble multiple 3D files, optimize them interactively, and then upload the refined models directly to Asset Manager. This workflow is particularly useful for teams collaborating on high-precision 3D data preparation for engineering, manufacturing, and visualization.
Scenes can be uploaded directly to the target Organization and Project, using the built-in menus. The process exports the scene locally as a temporary .glb file before transferring it to Unity Cloud, ensuring a smooth transition from local editing to cloud-based collaboration.
However, the upload process is not iterative – each upload creates a new asset rather than updating an existing one. Additionally, only uploads are supported, meaning you cannot retrieve assets from Asset Manager back into Pixyz Studio for further optimization.
Python Command Line Interface
The Python Command Line Interface serves as a command-line interface (CLI) for performing bulk operations. The Bulk Upload CLI is a command-line tool that simplifies the process of uploading and downloading assets in Asset Manager. It allows you to efficiently transfer large volumes of local assets to the cloud by creating structured configuration files. The tool supports various input methods, including CSV-based ingestion, direct Unity package extraction, or folder-based selection, ensuring flexibility in handling different asset structures.
During the upload process, the command-line interface validates asset data and provides an overview of the number of files and total size before proceeding. You can fine-tune upload parameters, such as parallel asset creation and file transfer limits, to optimize performance based on network conditions.
For bulk downloads, the CLI provides a Python-based script that retrieves assets from Asset Manager. You can filter assets by organization, project, or collection, and specify download directories with options to overwrite or skip existing files. The script also supports metadata filtering, enabling precise asset retrieval while maintaining project structure.
Start by downloading the codebase from GitHub and ensuring you meet the necessary prerequisites. To install the Python SDK, follow the steps outlined in the manual. Once installed, you can begin uploading assets via your terminal. Choose an input method, such as a folder from a Unity project. The tool offers multiple options for uploading and downloading, and you can also edit metadata using a CSV file.
Pixyz SDK
The Pixyz SDK can integrate Pixyz technology with Asset Manager to provide programmatic access to 3D asset transformation and optimization at scale.
As the core of Unity’s transformation tools – like Pixyz Studio, Pixyz Plugin 3.0, and Asset Manager – it improves real-time visualization, CAD-to-3D workflows, asset optimization, and XR experiences. It’s ideal for programmatically optimizing 3D assets with Pixyz and automating their cloud transfer.
The SDK includes C# and Python APIs, allowing developers to automate asset processing with tools for mesh repair, reduction, UV unwrapping, and smart merging using a set of 200+ built-in algorithms. It supports over 70 file formats, facilitating the ingestion of CAD, BIM, and point cloud data for various industrial and engineering applications.
The Pixyz SDK runs both on-premises – including in air-gapped environments (secure systems isolated from internet access and external networks) – and as a cloud-ready Docker image. It can be deployed across local and remote infrastructures, making it an obvious choice for secure and restricted network environments. A license is required to run Pixyz SDK. Connect with us if you want to try it, and watch this webinar to better understand the SDK.
Asset Manager SDK and REST API
Asset Manager capabilities can also be accessed via the Asset Manager SDK and the Asset Manager REST API, which support different integration needs, e.g., a proprietary app to access and review assets.
The Asset Manager SDK offers a way to work with assets directly inside Unity. It abstracts API calls into pre-built functions, making it easy to discover, create, update, delete, and manage assets without manually handling API requests.
The SDK ensures integration with Unity Editor workflows, containing pre-built components that serialize requests and handle errors to simplify communication between the client and the Asset Manager. It buffers your application from the API, allowing you to update it to support API changes without immediately modifying your application code.
The SDK offers different use cases; Unity provides the Industry Viewer Template, which demonstrates how the SDK facilitates asset viewing, organization, and collaboration in a real-world scenario, giving teams a preview of its capabilities before implementation.
The Asset Manager REST API enables programmatic control over asset management, allowing you to automate asset creations, versioning, retrieval, and processing. This approach is ideal for developers integrating Asset Manager into existing pipelines, third-party applications, or custom automation workflows. The API provides flexibility for managing assets at scale, ensuring a streamlined and efficient workflow for 3D content management.
Conclusion
Unity’s Asset Manager gives you powerful tools to manage digital assets efficiently. You can work visually or use code – whatever suits your workflow and team best. By centralizing asset management, you can enhance collaboration, maintain version control, and streamline your development process across projects.
