Gather Resources — the Blender way to collect your project’s media

Collect / assemble / gather all external resources into a single folder with one click.
Or, in plain English: GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.

Early testing shows it handles most production scenarios correctly —
but as always: Make back-ups if testing with major productions.

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What This Add-on Does

Gather Resources scans your Blender project for:

• VSE video strips
• Audio strips
• Image textures
• Images used in materials
• Cache files (e.g., mesh sequence caches)
• Other external media referenced by your .blend

Then it copies all discovered files into a local textures/ directory beside your .blend file.

It’s basically After Effects Collect Files, but for Blender.

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How to Use

Once installed and enabled:

File → External Data → Gather Resources

Blender will create a textures/ directory beside your .blend,
and copy all referenced external files into it.

A summary of collected files will appear in the status bar.

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Roadmap (Speculative)

Alpha (Current Phase)

• Avoid duplicate file creation by checking size+mtime before copy
• Smarter detection of duplicate files already present

Beta

• Confirm full cross-platform behaviour (Linux, Windows, macOS)
• Stabilise overwrite and conflict-resolution logic

Production / Stable

• Full bug elimination
• Hardened reliability for archiving, backup, and project transfer

Future Ideas

• Auto-Gather Mode (toggle to run after saving or before rendering)
• Gather Proxy / Cache Data into a separate folder
• Distribute Resources
  • Opposite of Gather — restore files to original locations using stored mappings
• Cleanup Mode
  • Identify unused files
  • Warn if other .blend files share dependencies
  • Remove unreferenced assets for archiving
• Menu streamlining (collapse Pack + Gather tools under one section)

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Reporting Bugs

This add-on is new and will absolutely have bugs.
Any testing you can provide is appreciated.

Submit issues here:
https://github.com/SimonHeggie/Blender-GatherResources/issues

Please use the template below:

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🐛 Bug Report Template

1. Summary of the Issue

What went wrong?
What did you expect to happen?

2. Steps to Reproduce

1. Open Blender (include version).
2. Set up scene with videos/images/audio/cache/etc.
3. Run Gather Resources.
4. Check the textures/ directory.

3. Expected vs. Actual Behaviour

Expected:
Actual:

4. System Information

• OS:
• CPU:
• GPU:
• RAM:
• Blender Version:

5. Files and Formats Involved

Which types were present and which failed?

• Video (.mp4, .mkv, etc.)
• Image (.png, .jpg, etc.)
• Audio (.wav, .mp3, etc.)
• Alembic (.abc)
• Models (.fbx, .obj, etc.)

6. Errors or Console Output

Paste any error messages or logs.

7. Attempts to Fix / Workarounds (If Any)

What have you already tried?

8. Additional Context

Does it happen always, or intermittently?
Project-specific or global?

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License

GPL-3.0-or-later
© 2024–2025 Simon Heggie