ways to display AssetInfo['name']

[ilpoldo]

Hi! I recently had a conversation with the modelling and layout team in my studio about accessing descriptive asset names when browsing the outliner and/or looking at the attribute editor in Maya.

We often leverage variant sets to switch between asset variants to populate large shots or environment. For example by having a large, medium, small crate variant. It would be really handy to easily see a meaningful name for assemblies and component prims that have been referenced from an asset library independently from how they are named in the hierarchy of the shot or the whole environment.

If the information could be read directly from the usd prim itself (for example using the name from AssetInfo - docs) teams could author and resolve it through composition without any need for tooling/extensions.

[wallworm]

Thank you for this suggestion. We have been exploring ways to surface more information lately; stay tuned for details about exposure to AssetInfo. I cannot give release dates but you can take a peak at this PR: #4265

[ilpoldo]

Thanks! That looks promising. Sounds like for now assetInfo section will sit pretty low in the AE: people hoping to use it to identify selected asset variants might have to scroll down a bit. Generally speaking the top prim of an asset has very little going on besides asset info and variant selection, so maybe this is not a big deal.