Tips for good searches

Most searches work the first time if you describe what you want to see. These tips cover the cases that trip people up.

Describe the object, not the file

Search matches what props look like, so describe the thing: “wooden barrel with iron bands”, “office chair”, “hanging industrial lamp”. Adjectives about look help (“rusty”, “worn”, “sci-fi”, “low wall”). Words that only appear in your head or in a spreadsheet do not.

If you do know the name, type it. Names, pack names, categories, tags and comment text are all searched by keyword, and a name hit ranks high. Partial words work: SM_Crate finds SM_Crate_01 and SM_Crate_Large.

Ask for a surface when you want one

A search for an object returns objects. Textures and materials are held back from the appearance match unless you ask for a surface, because a flat texture resembles almost any description.

You type	You get
mossy stone	Stone objects with moss: walls, rocks, ruins.
mossy stone texture	Mossy stone textures and materials.
mossy stone with the type filter set to texture	Mossy stone textures.

Words that make a search about surfaces: texture, textured, material, surface, pattern, tile, tiling, tileable, seamless, decal, trim, trimsheet, albedo, basecolor, pbr, shader (plurals too). Textures and materials whose names contain your words are always found by keyword either way.

Find data maps by name

Normal, roughness, metallic, ambient occlusion, height and mask textures (and packed maps like ORM or RMA) do not look like anything a description could match, so text search never matches them by appearance. Search for them by name instead, which is how they are usually named anyway:

• T_Brick_Wall finds the whole set, including T_Brick_Wall_N and T_Brick_Wall_ORM.
• brick normal finds textures with both words in their name, pack, category, tags or comments.
• Filter to the texture type to keep meshes that share the name out of the list.

To find maps that look like a map you already have, open it and use find similar. Similarity compares images directly, so a normal map finds other normal maps.

Use quotes for exact phrases

Words match separately and in any order. When the order matters, quote the phrase: "fire hydrant" matches those two words together, while fire hydrant also matches a prop tagged “fire” in a pack called “Hydrant Pack”.

Let filters do the narrowing

Put hard requirements in filters, not in the search text. “barrel” with a triangle maximum of 5,000 and the mesh type works better than “low poly barrel mesh”, because filters are exact and the text is free to describe the look.

Start from a good result

When a result is close but not right, find similar props from it rather than rewording the search. To match a piece of concept art or a screenshot, search by image.

Read scores as order only

The score on ranked results only tells you which result ranks above which. It is not a confidence or a percentage, and scores from different searches are not comparable. Judge results by looking at them.