The File Browser
Projects in Clustta are mapped to a location on your computer. You can leave this at the default location set by Clustta or change it in the app settings.
On launching the project by clicking the Launch icon, you will be greeted with the Clustta file browser where you can manage all of your assets and collections. For a new project, the browser will be empty and you need to create new assets or add them to the location on your file system.
Assets and Collections
Files and folders in your native file browser are referred to as Assets and Collections respectively in Clustta.
Assets
Think of an asset as anything you work with: a video, an image, a PDF, a Photoshop file (PSD), or even a Blender file (BLEND). It could also be a weblink that takes you to online tools like Canva, Figma, or Pinterest.
To make it easy to find what you need, assets can have extra information like Tags and Types to help you search and filter through everything.
Creating Assets
Assets can be created in two ways:
- By adding a file(s) to the Clustta project location in your native file browser.
- By creating it from within Clustta using Asset templates
Adding a file to the native file browser.
The most straight foward way to get stuff into Clustta is by just adding files into the project working folder. To access the project working folder, you can either click on the show in explorer button on the Details pane (by the right) or right click on an empty area in the file browser to show the project context menu; click Show in Explorer to reveal the working folder.
Tip
You can also copy the path to the location by clicking the clipboard icon. From within your software (e.g Blender, Photoshop), you can then paste this path in the dialogue that pops up whenever you're required to save your file.
Clustta always scans your project location and whenever new items are detected, the Add checkpoint button would appear on the Action bar (at the top of the asset browser) as well as on the newly detected asset or collection.
Info
If you cant see the newly added assets in Clustta, click on the Refresh icon on the action bar.
Clicking on the on the Add checkpoint button will trigger a modal prompting you to add a descriptive comment for the new checkpoint. Go ahead ang click on Confirm.
Clustta will register these assets and now:
- Whenever you make modifications to the working files, Clustta will track the changes giving you the option to add new checkpoints efficiently without duplicating the files.
- If you are working on a Synced project, your collaborators can access these files from their own computers.
Tip
You need to 'Save' these changes so Clustta can upload your files to the Server to back it up as well as share with your collaborators.
Collections
Collections on the other hand are basically folders for organizing your assets.
Like assets, they can also have extra information like Types to help you search and filter while searching.
Creating Collections
- Click on the add collection button
at the top left of the project browser. - On click, a modal will popup. Enter your desired name in the collection name field.
- Select a Type from the drop down. This will be useful later on when you want to search and filter through your project items.
Info
if you cant find the desired collection type, go to the project settings to add new types.
Clustta adds a collection type called generic by default to all projects.
- Optionally you can turn on the Library toggle
Info
When Library is turned on, every collaborator on the project will have access to the collection and all of it's contents regardless of whether they were directly assigned to it.
- When you are satisfied, click the Confirm button to create the collection.
Tip
You can right click on any collect to reveal a context menu which can allow you quickly perform actions like creating a nested collection inside the selected one.
Navigating the Clustta file browser
Collections are mapped to the respective folders in your native file system and assets are also mapped to their corresponding working files.
Clustta has a unique navigation system where to view or access the contents of a collection(folder), you can simply click on the chevron icon to the left of the collection to expose its contents. This way, you can have an overview of everything in a simple file tree view without going folders deep just to access files.
