Skip to content
CGfield
Sign in

Guides

Megascans, Poly Haven, ambientCG and KitBash3D in Blender with their materials

A downloaded asset comes as a folder: a model and textures named after its library’s convention. In Blender you then have to import the model, build the Principled BSDF and wire each texture. Everything, the CGfield conversion application, does it for a whole folder and delivers, for each asset, a .blend scene with its materials assigned, marked as a Blender asset.

Supported libraries

Everything reads folders as they were downloaded, and ZIP archives. It recognizes the Megascans layout and reads the textures that are there. Poly Haven and ambientCG ship the normal map in both OpenGL and DirectX formats: Everything keeps the OpenGL one. Surfaces and 3D plants from textures.com are recognized, and a KitBash3D pack, delivered as a single FBX, becomes one asset per kit piece.

Steps

  1. Install the CGfield launcher with a free account, then Everything and AssetBrowser.
  2. Drag the downloaded folder into Everything. Several assets can be dropped at once.
  3. In the Delivery section, leave “USD component” off, keep the .abc format, tick Blender among the native scenes, then Cycles, EEVEE or both among the engines.
  4. Choose the output folder and start the export. At the end of the batch, the “Add to the AssetBrowser” button files the assets into the library and catalog of your choice.
  5. In AssetBrowser, click “Connect an application”, choose Blender, then restart Blender: your libraries appear in its asset browser.

What the .blend scene contains

Each asset gets Asset_cycles.blend, and Asset_eevee.blend if EEVEE is ticked: the same material, with each engine’s render settings (128 samples and denoising for Cycles, ray tracing on for EEVEE). The geometry is imported, the Alembic with one shape per material named after it, and the Principled BSDF materials are already assigned. The asset is a collection marked for the asset browser, with its preview and catalog. Texture paths are relative to the .blend: the asset folder can be moved without losing its textures.

Color textures are read as sRGB, data maps as Non-Color, and a gloss map is inverted into roughness. The normal map, in OpenGL format, goes through a Normal Map node, and opacity goes into Alpha. A leaf with a translucency map gets a Translucent BSDF, also cut by the opacity. A thin glass pane is set to an IOR of 1.0 and keeps its reflection through the Coat; EEVEE renders it with ray-traced transmission and Slab thickness. On a material-only asset, the displacement map is wired to the Displacement node, with the scale and midlevel of the source material.

Drag the asset from the Blender asset browser

Each AssetBrowser library is registered as a Blender asset library. Drag a thumbnail into the 3D viewport: the asset follows the cursor, lands on the surface under it or on the ground, and Esc cancels. The gesture follows the browser’s import method (Link or Append) and takes the Cycles or EEVEE scene chosen in the AssetBrowser app, without changing your scene’s render settings. A material delivered without geometry shows up as a material, assigned to the object you drag it onto; an HDRI becomes the scene’s world, and the browser sidebar places the chosen variant of an asset that has several.

Good to know

Everything runs on 64-bit Windows 10 and 11. The classic mode needs Houdini 20.5 or later, and .blend scenes need Blender on the machine. UDIM textures are not supported. In EEVEE, displacement relief renders darker than in Cycles.

Videos

Other guides

Download CGfield for WindowsWhat is CGfield?