One asset, many variations
You rarely have just one version of a thing. A crate comes in oak, pine, and burnt. A sprite ships at four resolutions. Variants collapse those alternates into a single tile, so your library shows one asset, not the dozen flavours of it.
The grid gets buried
A texture has its PBR maps, a half-size copy, and that one export you made for a jam two years ago. Dropped into the grid, twelve near-identical tiles bury everything around them.
Variants collapse those alternates into a single tile. Your library shows one asset, and the rest stay one click away. Nothing is moved, copied, or deleted on disk, it is purely how the library groups them.
Creating a group
Two ways, whichever suits the moment.
Select and group
Select two or more assets, right-click, and choose Group as Variants. The asset you right-clicked becomes the main, the one the grid shows.
Drag one onto another
Drag an asset directly onto another to group them. Drop it onto a group's main to fold it into that existing group.
Grouped tiles get a small count badge. Click it to fan the alternates out inline without leaving the grid, and expand as many groups at once as you like.
Choose which one shows
The main is the asset the grid displays for the whole group. To change it, open the asset's details panel and find the Variants list.
Hit the star on the variant you want front of house, and the tile updates straight away. No reimporting, no renaming.
Ungrouping is just as quick
Right-click a group's main and choose Ungroup Variants. Every alternate goes back to standing on its own in the library. Select several mains first to ungroup multiple groups in one go.
To pull a single alternate out while leaving the rest grouped, use Remove from Variant Group instead.
Good to know
Your files stay put
Grouping never touches your files on disk. Variants are a library view, not a folder move.
Groups travel as a unit
Deleting a group removes all of its variants together. It is undoable like any other delete.
Drag the whole group out
Drag a whole group out to an external application like Godot or Unity in one action. The entire set goes across together, no need to expand it first.
Nothing gets lost
Search works on individual assets, not the grouped tile, so every alternate still turns up in results, including the ones folded inside a group.
Frequently asked questions
A variant is an alternate version of an asset, such as a different resolution, colourway, or export. You group the alternates under one representative asset, called the main, and your library shows just the main with the rest one click away.
No. Grouping never touches your files on disk. Variants are purely a library view, not a folder move. Nothing is moved, copied, or deleted when you group or ungroup.
Two ways. Select two or more assets, right-click, and choose Group as Variants. Or drag one asset directly onto another. The asset you right-click, or drop onto, becomes the main.
Grouped tiles get a small count badge. Click it to fan the alternates out inline without leaving the grid. You can expand as many groups at once as you like.
Open the asset’s details panel, find the Variants list, and click the star on the alternate you want front of house. The tile updates straight away, with no reimporting or renaming.
Right-click the group’s main and choose Ungroup Variants. Every alternate goes back to standing on its own. Select several mains first to ungroup multiple groups in one go.
Use Remove from Variant Group on that alternate. The rest of the group stays intact.
Deleting a group removes all of its variants together, since they travel as a unit. Like any other delete in Asset Hoard, it is undoable.
Yes. Drag the asset onto the group’s main and it folds into that existing group.
Yes. Search works on individual assets rather than the grouped tile, so every alternate stays findable, including ones tucked inside a group. This applies to both standard and semantic search.
Yes. Variant groups work inside bundles, projects, and the workbench, just like any other asset. Grouping is only a view, so it travels with the assets wherever you organise them.
Locally, alongside the rest of your library. Asset Hoard is local-first, with no servers involved beyond downloading the app and validating your licence. Your grouping never leaves your machine.
One tile per asset. The rest, one click away.
Local-first. Offline-capable. No subscription.