Introducing LocalFab: The Missing Front End for Your 3D Asset Library
Why we built a native macOS 3D asset browser — instant previews, local-first indexing, tags, collections, and engine-ready scene export for $49, once.
Every 3D artist we know has the same asset problem. Years of marketplace purchases, scans, and experiments — thousands of files representing thousands of dollars — sitting on a drive with less browsability than a 1998 FTP server. The assets aren't the bottleneck. Seeing them is.
The gap we kept hitting
Game engines have beautiful content browsers — for assets you've already imported. DCC tools can open anything — one file at a time, a minute per look. Finder shows you filenames. Nothing on the Mac treats your local library as the product: browsable, searchable, previewable, exportable.
So the workflow everyone actually has is: guess from a filename, wait for Blender, wrong rock, repeat. Inspiration doesn't survive that loop.
What LocalFab is
LocalFab is a native macOS app (SwiftUI + SceneKit, no Electron) that becomes the front end for every model and texture you own:
- Index: point it at your folders; it builds a local SQLite index of every OBJ, FBX, GLB, GLTF, USDZ, STL, and DAE, plus PNG, JPG, TGA, EXR, HDR, BMP, and TIFF textures
- Preview: click any model for an instant 3D viewport — orbit, pan, zoom, five lighting presets, wireframe and shading modes. Textures render on a cube, sphere, or plane with full metadata
- Organize: tags and collections stored in the database, never written into your files
- Export: one click turns a collection into an engine-ready folder — models, textures, relinked paths, manifest
Local-first, on purpose
No cloud, no account, no telemetry, no subscription. Your assets never leave your machine and the app works entirely offline. That isn't a missing feature — it's the design. Asset libraries contain purchased content, client work, and unreleased game art; none of it belongs on someone else's server just so you can browse it.
It's also why the price is a price, not a rent: $49 during early access ($59 at launch), one time, with lifetime updates for v1.
Where we are
Ten of twelve milestones are shipped: the browser, the 3D viewer, texture previews, thumbnails, tagging, collections, scene export, the discovery dashboard, and the v1.0 polish pass are all done. We're in the final stage now — packaging the DMG release — with the Mac App Store to follow.
If your drive is full of assets you can't see, join the waitlist. You'll get one email when the download is live, and the $49 price locked in. In the meantime, our library organization guide will get your folders ready for indexing day.