Media & 3D Assets
Pictures, video, sound and 3D files belong to the whole project, not to one page. A reference photo you add to a character's page is still in the project's media, and you can use it anywhere.
They are listed in the Director view's Browser, in two sections, on both Plan and Create:
- Media: pictures, video and sound.
- 3D assets: models, animations, skies, looks, splat scans and textures.
What you can add
| Kind | Files | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Picture | any image | Storyboard frames, lookbooks, pages |
| Video | video files | Footage on the timeline, references |
| Sound | audio files | Sound on the timeline and in 3D scenes |
| 3D model | .glb, and other 3D formats converted when added | Stand-ins and props in 3D Blocking |
| Animation | a .glb with moves and no mesh | Moves for a character or model |
| Sky | .hdr or .exr, or a 360° picture | Light and background in a 3D scene |
| Look | .cube colour table | A colour grade over a camera's view or the film |
| Splat scan | .spz, .splat, .ksplat, .sog, or a splat .ply | A scanned place or object in a 3D scene |
| Texture | any image | A surface on a shape or model |
For the 3D formats that are converted (OBJ, FBX, USD, STL, Blender files and others), see Bringing work in from Blender.
Adding files
Press + on the Media or 3D assets section. The Add wizard asks how you want to add it:
- How: From this device, From links or Generate. Generate makes it with AI; see Generating Media.
- Add files or Add links: choose or drop as many files as you like, of any mix of kinds, or paste one link or many. Each linked file is downloaded to this device.
- Review: one row per file, saying what it comes in as (Picture, Texture, Sky (360°), Video, Sound, Look (colour table), 3D model, Reference document or Script), its name, and where it goes. Untick a row to leave it out. A file too large to keep, or a link the site won't let the app download, can come in as a link instead.
- Save: each file is added in turn. Done closes the wizard. Scripts open their own import after that.
Media goes to Media or 3D assets, documents to Library › Documents, and scripts to Library › Scripts.
You can also drop a file on a page, or use a page's image button. That opens Add media, with From this device, From a link, From the Library and Generate. From the Library lists what the project already has, with Search by name or tag. Pick one or more to add them as they are, or one picture to mark up first; marking up saves a copy.
Finding things
- Filters. Chips appear above a section once there is something to tell apart. Media has All, then Brought in and Generated once something in it was generated, and Sound once it has sound and something else. 3D assets has a chip for each kind it holds (Models, Animations, Skies, Looks, Splats, Textures) once it holds two.
- Search. The search field at the top of the Browser finds media by name and by tag.
- Thumbnails. Pictures and videos get a small preview. A video's preview moves.
Tiles and their menu
Right-click a tile, press and hold it on a touch screen, or use its … button:
- Open: show it in the Viewer.
- Add to page: put it on the page you have open.
- Mark up: draw over a picture. This saves a copy; the original stays as it was.
- Rename.
- Tags…: add or remove tags. Search finds media by its tags as well as its name.
- Remake moving preview (videos).
- Download: save a copy of the file.
- Remove from project, which asks first.
To pick several tiles, Shift-click or ⌘-click (Ctrl-click on Windows and Linux), or drag a box around them. Tags… then tags them all, and the bar at the bottom offers Remove selected. With the sequencer on, it also offers Place at the playhead, and you can drag tiles onto the timeline.
Remove unused 3D frames (a button in the Media section, once there are 3D frames) clears storyboard frames drawn from 3D that no panel uses any more.
Looking at media
Pick a tile and it opens in the Director's Viewer:
- Pictures can be zoomed, fitted, and put beside another with Compare.
- Videos play, loop and mute.
- 3D models turn in a viewer that shows their size, triangle count and animations.
- Skies show their brightness, with an Exposure slider.
- Looks show a test card: as it is on the left, with the look on the right.
- Splat scans show their size, with Turn over for a scan that came in upside down.
Editing a sound
A sound opens in the sound editor. Drag across the waveform to select; Shift-drag adds another region. The tools apply to the selection: Trim to selection, Delete selection, Cut, Copy, Paste, Fade in, Fade out, Gain, Normalize and Silence, with Undo and Redo.
Four panels fold out under the controls:
- Effects: a stack of effects rendered into the saved sound, in order. Apply bakes one into the edit instead. Preview effects lets you hear them first.
- Spectrogram: time across, frequency up.
- Metadata: what the file carries (including broadcast WAV and iXML fields such as scene, take and tape) and what was measured, such as loudness and peak.
- Layout: the microphone array and each channel's pattern, for multichannel recordings.
The original is never changed. Save as new sound files an edited WAV copy in Media, named "(edited)".
Where files are kept
EpicDraft doesn't host your media. A file stays on your devices and goes to collaborators directly from yours.
- With a Folder Sync folder for the project, files are saved in its media folder as real files you can see and back up. Any size works.
- Without one, files are kept in the app (or the browser), up to 50 MB each. For anything larger, host it yourself (Dropbox, Drive, S3 or anywhere) and add the link. Make sure the link is shared so collaborators can open it.
- A link is never copied: every device opens it from where it is hosted.
A tile with a crossed-out cloud isn't on this device yet. The app asks the other devices in the project for it and fills it in when one is online. See File Sync.