The command center

F4: your project drawn as a production pipeline: what depends on what, what is stale, and what is stuck.

F4. The File Library answers "what do I have"; the Command Center answers "where is it in the pipeline, and what is downstream of it".

The command center over an empty project

The pipeline#

Assets are laid out along seven stages, in production order:

  1. Concept & design
  2. Sculpt / high-poly
  3. Retopo & UV
  4. Textures & materials
  5. Animation & VFX
  6. Audio & video
  7. Engine & lookdev

Two views of the same thing: a board (a column per stage) and a graph (nodes and dependency edges). Select any node and the panel tells you what it depends on, what uses it, where it is currently open, and what you can do with it next.

Statuses#

Each asset carries two independent markers.

Bake status, computed:

Bakedup to date
Dirtysomething upstream changed since the last bake
Not bakednever baked
Errorthe last bake failed
Orphannothing produces it and nothing consumes it

Work status, yours to set: to do, WIP, done. Click to cycle.

What it lets you do#

  • Resume in {module}: jump to where the asset is being worked on, with no reload.
  • Send to {stage}: hand the asset to the next step of the pipeline.
  • Bake to texture, and re-bake dependents: re-bake everything downstream of a change in one pass, with progress.
  • Duplicate (fork): clone an asset with its dependencies.
  • Convert to live link: turn a frozen copy back into a live reference, so it follows its source again.
  • Break a dependency link.
  • Snapshot version and Restore: the same version machinery as the dashboard, reachable per asset.
  • Purge orphans: remove everything nothing references. Two clicks, on purpose.

Missing steps#

The Missing steps filter is the one worth learning. It finds assets with no downstream trace. "No downstream trace of this asset, send it on, or mark it done." On a project of any size that is the list of things you sculpted and never textured, or textured and never brought into the Engine.

Review#

A dailies mode: assets that have a preview, one at a time, with arrow keys to move, T / W / D to set the work status, and Annotate to draw on a frame and leave a note. Notes are per asset and stay with it.

Memory#

Each node reports its memory footprint, so the thing that is making the project heavy is visible rather than guessed at.