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Split a KitBash3D kit into assets for Houdini, Maya, 3ds Max and Blender

In its FBX version, a KitBash3D kit is one large file that holds dozens of pieces, from buildings to props. Everything, the CGfield conversion application, turns each piece into a separate asset, with its thumbnail and materials. The delivered pieces then go into a library that the AssetBrowser panel browses inside your application.

Each piece of the kit becomes an asset

Everything recognizes a KitBash3D kit by its KB3D_ textures and its FBX file. To list the pieces, it reads only the file header, then groups the objects by the kit’s naming convention: a piece and its sub-objects form one asset, and each lettered variant (A, B…) becomes a piece of its own. Each piece is moved to the origin, resting on the ground.

Everything draws a thumbnail of each piece from its geometry and textures, and a double-click opens the card full size, with a 3D preview you can orbit. In a grid of several dozen cards, the search filters by name, and a click on KitBash3D in the Libraries panel shows only those pieces.

Steps

  1. Install the CGfield launcher with a free account, then Everything.
  2. Drop the kit folder into Everything. A card appears for each piece, and the thumbnails fill in as they are drawn.
  3. Untick the pieces you do not need: the Convert button only exports the ticked cards that remain visible after a search or a filter.
  4. In the Delivery section, turn on “USD component” for Solaris, or leave it off and tick a mesh format, the native scenes (Houdini, Maya, 3ds Max, Blender) and the renderers you want.
  5. Once the export is done, “Add to the AssetBrowser” puts the delivered pieces into a library. In your application, drag a piece from the AssetBrowser panel into the scene.

The materials of each piece

A piece carries only the materials its polygons use, built from the kit’s textures: base color, normal, roughness, metal and opacity. The kits’ emission and refraction maps are wired too: lamps, torches and signs glow, while glass and plastic tarps let light through. The materials are built for the ticked renderers: Karma (MaterialX), Arnold and V‑Ray, plus Cycles or EEVEE in Blender.

What you get for each piece

With “USD component” off, each piece gets one native scene per application and per renderer, with the geometry loaded and the materials already assigned: Piece_arnold.hip, Piece_vray.mb, one .max scene per renderer, a .blend for Cycles or EEVEE. The Alembic comes out with one shape per material, named after it. Each piece keeps its textures in its own folder; when the output is on the same drive as the kit, those taken from the kit are hard links there, with no extra copy.

With “USD component” on, each piece becomes a self-contained USD component: the .usd file, payload.usdc, geo.usdc, mtl.usdc, the textures folder and the thumbnail, with levels of detail and proxy. When the kit provides its textures in 2K and 4K, the component also carries a res variant (1K, 2K, 4K), set to 4K.

Good to know

Everything runs on 64-bit Windows 10 and 11. The classic mode needs Houdini 20.5 or later; Maya, 3ds Max and Blender scenes also need the matching application on the machine. The dropped folder must contain the FBX version of the kit, and objects whose names do not follow its KB3D_ convention are left out. The first read loads the whole FBX file into memory; the pieces are then read from a cache. Each piece counts as one export: the free account allows one, as a trial.

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