StrataSource
Feature: Asset Collections
Which component should be improved?
Hammer
Describe your feature suggestion in more detail
Problem
Quite a substantial amount of time in Hammer is used to find the right asset. Whether it's textures or models, finding the right one can take a few seconds to a lot longer time depending on your knowledge of the available assets and your knowledge of the naming of them.
Some people utilize various "hacks" to make finding (and reusing assets) faster. From cheat sheets of asset names to entities grouped by aestetic (old aperture, overgrown etc). Portal 2 and other Source Engine games have assets for very specific themes that fit together, and building a map with a set aesthetic without any form of organization will have you search over and over for the same or similar assets (count how many "black_wall" textures are in Portal 2 and which ones are used for which).
There are also often multiple variants of the same asset, for example the sliding double doors (which have a static model, one with open/close animations and one only with the animation seen in the neurotoxin scene) or Portal 2's catwalks (which have a normal, cheap and billboard version).
Existing concepts
Valve already utilizes a tagging system for assets where tags are defined in the meta files and can be used for searching within hammers texture/model browser. It does however lack an easy way for user-defined tags or other ways to group assets.
Asset collections
Ideally, users should be able to create "asset collections" within the UI and easily add/remove assets to/from them. Then, when required, the texture/model browser should have a way to filter only for assets included in those collections.
Users should be able to add their assets to multiple collections, they should be saved in a sensible location and could give users a way to organize the original games assets (and their custom assets) to their liking. For example, a texture like "black_wall_metal_002a" could be added to the collections "Non-Portable", "Wall tiles" and "Destroyed Aperture" and be filtered for accordingly. This also gives users the ability to see potential weak-spots in the existing asset list and create their own that fit the same aesthetic (eg: create another variant of that black wall tile that fits a different brush shape).
Crude UI concepts
Some very early ideas how this could be implemented in the current asset/model browser.
Collection filter
Add/remove from collection
Potential
An easy to use asset collection system could severely cut down on time needed to find just the right asset when mapping. Users could have various setups for different aesthetics, create collections for specific concepts or based on a special property (like "shiny")
