The asset library
Your shared shelf of reusable media and graphs — with stable identity, portable paths, and live reloading.
The asset library is where DNA keeps the things you reuse across projects: images, video, audio, 3D models, splats, and your own saved subgraphs and Expressions. Browse it in the Asset Browser; drag anything onto the canvas to drop in a source node.
By default the library lives in a folder called ~/NodeTool Assets. You can add more watched folders in Preferences.
Stable identity — files can move, links don't break
When you import a file, DNA gives it a permanent identity that travels with the file, not with its location or its name. So you can rename photo.png to hero.png, or reorganise folders, and every graph that uses it keeps working.
This identity is stored quietly alongside each asset, so it survives renames, moves, and app updates. There's no central database you have to keep in sync — the folder on disk is the source of truth.
Renaming an asset in your file manager is fine — just keep its little companion file (the same name with a .ntmeta extension) next to it. They're a pair.
Portable paths — projects that survive moving machines
Inside a .dna project, assets are referenced with symbolic shortcuts rather than full hard-coded paths. That means a project zips up and opens cleanly on another computer.
| Shortcut | Points to |
|---|---|
$PROJECT | The folder your .dna project lives in |
$ASSET_LIBRARY | Your asset library root |
$HOME / ~ | Your home folder |
DNA automatically writes the shortest shortcut it can when you save, and expands it back to a real path when you open. Keeping media either inside the project folder or in the asset library is the surest way to make a project portable — see Package and Collect for gathering everything in one move.
Live reloading
The library watches your asset folders. Edit an image in another app and save it, drop a new file into a watched folder, or delete one — DNA notices and updates the graph for you, no reimport needed.
When a file changes, DNA keeps showing the old version for the instant it takes to reload, so your viewport doesn't flash. New files appear in the Asset Browser on their own.
Auto-reload is a preference. If you'd rather changes only appear when you ask, turn it off in Preferences and use the manual reload action instead.
When an asset goes missing
If a file an asset points to can't be found, your project won't crash. The missing asset shows up as a magenta-and-black checker placeholder so it's obvious at a glance, and it's listed in the Missing Assets panel.
That panel shows each missing or failed asset, which nodes use it, and a Locate button to point DNA at the file's new home. Once you relink, everything downstream picks back up.
A "failed" asset is different from a missing one — the file was found but couldn't be read (a corrupt image, an unsupported variant). The Missing Assets panel shows the error so you know which is which.