Package products for delivery

How you package a product decides how buyers receive it. Ordinary file products deliver as downloads. The two Blender-native delivery kinds go further: Sulu Market processes and validates them so they flow straight into buyers' Blender installations. Extensions deliver through the extensions repository, and assets through the online asset library. This page is the packaging contract for both.

Blender extensions

Upload a standard Blender extension archive: the same ZIP produced by Blender's extension tooling (for example blender --command extension build from your source directory).

What the pipeline enforces:

• The archive must contain exactly one blender_manifest.toml. The pipeline rejects archives with zero or multiple manifests.
• The manifest's `id` is permanent: it becomes the product's immutable extension identity, and every later version must keep the same id.
• The manifest `version` must match the product version you attach the archive to.
• Fill the standard manifest fields Blender requires: schema_version, id, version, name, tagline, maintainer, license, and blender_version_min (plus blender_version_max, tags, website, copyright, and permissions where relevant).
• If the extension ships native code or Python dependencies, declare platforms and bundle wheels. Buyers only see builds for their platform.
• The server re-validates every archive with pinned Blender 5.2 tooling and normalizes it before it can be published. A manifest that Blender itself would reject never reaches buyers.

Test the artifact, not the source tree

Install the exact built ZIP through Install from Disk in a factory-startup Blender before uploading. What you test is byte-for-byte what buyers receive after review.

Blender assets and asset libraries

Asset products accept two source shapes, and the processing pipeline turns either into entries in every buyer's remote asset library:

Single .blend

One .blend file containing your marked assets. Everything the assets reference must live inside the file: run File → External Data → Pack Resources before you save. The pipeline rejects the upload with an external-dependency error if it finds even one external reference (an unpacked texture, a linked library, a cache on disk).

Asset-library ZIP

A ZIP with the standard Blender asset-library layout:

• one or more .blend files (subfolders are allowed)
• exactly one blender_assets.cats.txt catalog map at the archive root
• optionally the textures those blends reference, as ordinary image files (.png, .jpg, .exr, .hdr, .tif, .tga, .webp, .bmp, .dds)

Nothing else is allowed in the archive: no scripts, no executables, no archives-in-archives, no symlinks, at most 2048 entries. This is the same folder structure Blender itself uses for a local asset library, zipped.

Mark the assets

The pipeline publishes only data-blocks explicitly marked as assets. Everything else in the file counts as supporting data. In Blender, right-click the object, material, node group, world, or other data-block and choose Mark as Asset. Use Blender's stock asset types. The pipeline rejects types that require Blender's experimental extended-asset-browser flag.

Organize with catalogs

Buyers browse your product by its catalogs, so assign every asset to one in Blender's Asset Browser catalog tree. In a ZIP bundle, each asset's catalog must exist in the root blender_assets.cats.txt. The pipeline rejects an asset whose catalog is missing from the map. On the buyer side, catalogs stay separate per product, so your names never collide with other sellers' catalogs.

Previews and metadata

Every asset needs a preview: the one Blender generated when you marked it, a custom preview you loaded, or the automatic render the processor generates when none is stored. Author the asset metadata in Blender's asset details panel. Description, author, license, copyright, and tags all carry through to what buyers see in their Asset Browser.

Compatibility

Asset processing currently runs pinned Blender 5.2, and the resulting library entries report Blender 5.2 compatibility to buyers. Save your source files with a 5.2-compatible feature set.

Verify like a buyer

Process and publish

Upload the source to the product version and let processing finish. The version's delivery state shows when the artifacts are ready.

Set up the buyer integrations

In a clean Blender profile, add your own asset library or extensions repository.

Check the buyer experience

Confirm previews, catalog structure, names, and metadata read the way you intended, install or import into an empty scene, and render.

• Selling: Storefront setup, listings, orders, payouts, and publishing.
• Buyer setup: How buyers connect the asset library and extensions repository.
• Seller terms: The current policy for eligibility, fees, and listing requirements.