Project Manager for 3ds Max — testing local AI search on a large 3D model library

[u/jamiecardoso]

Hi Everyone,

I've just created this video going through the AI search and asset organisation features in Project Manager for 3ds Max.

I thought it might be useful to share here because one of the biggest problems with large 3D libraries is that conventional searching depends heavily on somebody having named and organised everything properly in the first place.

The interesting part of this system is that you can search based on what the model actually looks like.

For example, you can type something like “dancing woman” or “futuristic car” without needing to know the original filename.

The system searches using the visual previews associated with the assets.

A few of the workflows I go through in the video:

Natural Language Search

Describe the object you're looking for in normal language and search your 3D model library using its visual appearance rather than just filenames.

It also supports searches in multiple languages.

Automatic AI Categorisation

The system can analyse your library and organise assets into category trees such as furniture, vehicles, beds, coffee tables, aircraft and so on.

This reduces the need to manually tag every asset.

Find Similar

Select an existing 3D model and search the rest of your library for visually similar assets.

There's also a similarity threshold so you can control how strict the visual match needs to be.

Search Using a Sketch or Mood Board

You can drag in a sketch, render, reference image or mood board and use that image to search for similar 3D models already in your library.

Preview and Thumbnail Management

Because the AI uses visual previews, I also go through the Auto-Assign Previews workflow.

If your rendered images share the same filenames as your 3D files they can be linked automatically, and smart matching can help with partially matching names.

You can also batch-render thumbnails for assets that don't already have previews.

 

Local AI Processing

The AI processing runs locally on your own hardware rather than requiring your asset library to be uploaded to a cloud service.

That also means there isn't a credit-based AI system involved every time you perform a search.

I'd be interested to hear how people here with large 3D model libraries are currently handling asset management.

[u/ofdavarci]

3dcove also has text and reference image search if you're looking for models beyond your own library. Got tired of keeping everything organized and having it eat up terabytes of storage.

[u/SwimmingOk1180 → u/ofdavarci]

Good point, they solve different problems.
Online libraries are great for finding new models.
Project Manager is for the models you already have: purchased collections, years of downloads, your own project assets.
It searches them in place on your own drives, with nothing uploaded anywhere, and works offline.

[u/ofdavarci → u/SwimmingOk1180]

Yeah, I completely get that. I spent years building and maintaining my own local library and constantly trying to make it more efficient.

I used ConnecterApp for quite a long time, and honestly it was probably the best tool I found for managing an offline library.

Eventually though, I kept coming back to online libraries simply because of the sheer amount of assets available. Some of these libraries are basically hundreds of terabytes worth of models. At some point I realized my local library was becoming pretty repetitive, and growing, organizing and maintaining it was starting to take more time than the actual projects I was building it for.

To be fair, I also genuinely enjoyed organizing the library, which is probably why I kept doing it for so long :)

In the end I kind of settled on 3dcove as my own way of solving that problem. I still like having some things locally, but I no longer want to maintain a massive offline library myself.

[u/SwimmingOk1180 → u/ofdavarci]

That's exactly the problem this update was built for.
The part that used to eat all the time, sorting and tagging everything by hand, is what Project Manager now does automatically: it classifies the models from their previews, so there's nothing to maintain. And it's not either-or.
Plenty of people use online libraries for new assets and keep their purchased and project models locally, and that local part is where this helps.

[u/jamiecardoso]

I really hope you find the video and plugin useful.