Material & Asset Browser

Module: Tech · Category: Workflow · Tool ID: MaterialBrowser

Two-tab material/texture browser with project-wide statistics. Browse lists all materials/textures with shader-name filter and search. Filtered Views narrows by asset type: All / Materials / Master Materials / Material Instances / Textures. Includes thumbnail regeneration, unused-material detection, and project-wide stat counts.

Browser open on Filtered Views tab with Master Materials filter, project stats visible above, results list below.

When to use it

• Quickly finding all instances of a specific master material
• Project-wide stats (total materials / MIs / textures / size)
• Detecting unused materials for cleanup
• Refreshing thumbnails on imported assets

What it isn’t for

• Don’t use this for material editing. Opens UE’s Material editor on double-click; editing happens there.
• Don’t use this for batch material creation. See Batch Material Creator.

Opening the tool

1. Open the EQLabs Hub and search for Material Browser (or browse to Tech → Workflow).
2. Click the tool card.
3. Use the tab bar: Browse or Filtered Views.

Tab 1: Browse

Section	What it does
Search	Filter by name
Shader Filter combo	Filter by shading model
Refresh	Re-scan project
Copy Results	Plain-text dump
Results list	Per-asset row: name, shader name, master/MI/texture flags

Single-click pings the asset; double-click opens its editor.

Tab 2: Filtered Views

Same list, narrower filter:

Filter	Scope
All	Materials + MIs + Textures
Materials	All UMaterial
Master Materials	UMaterial with no parent
Material Instances	UMaterialInstance
Textures	UTexture2D

Project statistics

Stat	What it shows
Total Materials	Master + child material count
Total MIs	Material instance count
Total Textures	Texture asset count
Total Size	Aggregate disk size
Unused Materials	Materials with zero references

Thumbnail regeneration

Per-asset action — forces UE to re-render the thumbnail for the selected asset. Useful after parameter changes that didn’t trigger a thumbnail refresh.

Filtered Views tab with Master Materials filter active, list showing only parent UMaterials.

Workflow

Find unused materials

1. Switch to Filtered Views tab.
2. Click “Detect Unused” (or watch the Unused Materials stat).
3. Filter to Materials, sort by reference count.

Refresh stale thumbnails

1. In Browse tab, find the asset.
2. Right-click row, choose Regenerate Thumbnail.

Settings reference

Field	Default
Search	empty
Shader Filter	All

Settings file: [Project]/Saved/EQLabs/Settings/MaterialBrowser.json

Output

• In-panel browse and stats.
• Clipboard. Copy Results.
• Thumbnail regeneration. Modifies asset metadata (saves on next Save All).
• No edits otherwise — read-only

Tips and gotchas

• Unused detection uses asset registry references. Blueprints that lazy-load by name won’t show up as references.
• Single-click pings; double-click opens the appropriate editor.

Related tools

• Material Layer Studio — for parent-chain debugging
• Material Instance Manager — for MI hierarchy + override tracking
• Material Replacer — for batch replacement