Mark an asset with a custom icon

You can customize the icon that appears next to an asset in the Hypergraph, Hypershade and Outliner. You can either associate all assets of the same template with a common icon or you can mark individual assets with unique icons.

To associate an icon with a template

Place your icon image file in the current project’s asset directory.
Rename the image to match the name of the template you want to associate it with.
In Maya, create an asset and assign the template. For more information, see Assign a template to an asset.
All asset nodes that use this template are now displayed with this custom icon.

To display a custom icon on a asset

Select an asset.
Open the Attribute Editor and navigate to the asset tab.
Select Icon Name under the Asset Attributes heading.
A file browser appears.
Navigate to select your icon image file and click the Open button.
The node for the asset is now displayed with your custom icon.

If the asset you selected is associated with a template that already has an associated icon, then only the selected asset’s icon is changed. The rest of the assets associated with that template are unaffected.

NoteFiletypes supported include BMP, GIF, JPG, JPEG, PNG, PBM, PGM, PPM, XBM, SVG, and XPM.

Note that due to the way that the interface handles transparency, you may notice messy borders around the edges of XPM images. To fix this, you must use an image format other than XPM. If you specify XPM, Maya automatically searches for a PNG of the same name before defaulting to XPM.

NoteIf you modify your icon file, you may need to reload Maya to see the changes.

NoteThe preferred size for an asset icon in the Outliner is 20 x 20 pixels. Icons larger than this are scaled automatically in the Outliner display.