user: How do I use Life Cycle of an Asset in Blender? Include parameters, examples, warnings and best practices.

assistant: This section describes how to create, edit, share, and use assets.

### Creating an Asset

To create an asset, first create the thing you want to turn into an asset.
That is, create the object, material, world, or pose your character.
The next step depends on the type of asset (see [Asset Types](#asset-types) above).

For primitive assets, use the **Mark as Asset** operator. It can be found in
the data-block selector, in the Outliner, and for objects in the 3D Viewport Object menu.
When using *Mark as Asset*, an automatic preview is generated.
If you want, you can also change or replace this with an image of your own choosing;
use the folder button next to the preview image in the Asset Details region of the Asset Browser.

For preset assets, there will be a dedicated button for the different asset types. For example for
poses there is a **Create Pose Asset** button in the Action editor. Brush assets are created by
using **Duplicate Asset** from existing brush assets.

After creating the asset, make sure the current blend-file is saved in your asset library.
Blender does not copy the asset into the asset library for you.

### Editing Assets

Since assets are regular data-blocks, with just a little bit of metadata attached,
they can be edited like any other Blender data.
Just open the file and edit the object, material, world, etc.

For poses assets, this is also possible. With the pose library file open,
just click the **Assign Action** button to assign the pose action to the currently selected armature.
Then you can use all of the animation tooling to edit the pose, remove or add keys, etc.

Editing asset metadata can be done via the [Asset Browser](../../editors/asset_browser.html#editing-asset-metadata).

### Sharing Assets

Because assets are simply stored in blend-files, they can be shared by sharing their blend-file.
Be sure to include the [Asset Catalog Definition File](catalogs.html#asset-catalog-definition-file) as well.

There is currently no functionality to extract selected assets and save them
(together with their catalog definitions) into a different blend-file.
This could be implemented as an add-on.

### Using Assets

Assets can be used from the [Asset Browser](../../editors/asset_browser.html).

The pose library extends this, and adds an Asset View to the 3D Viewport.
See [Use from 3D Viewport](../../animation/armatures/posing/editing/pose_library.html#pose-library-from-viewport).

### Removing Assets

Asset metadata can be erased by the *Clear Asset* operator.
This operator is available in data-block selectors, the Asset Browser,
and for objects in the 3D Viewport menu.

[image reference removed]

*Clear Asset* in the Asset Browser.

Clear Asset
:   Removes the asset metadata (catalog, description, author, tags), effectively turning an asset into
    a regular data-block. As such, the same removal rules apply as with other data-blocks. For example,
    if a mesh object is still placed in the scene, *Clear Asset* will not remove it from the scene.
    See [Life Time](../data_blocks.html#data-system-datablock-life-time). The preview will be kept inside the data-block
    and not be removed.

Clear Asset (Set Fake User)
:   Performs the same operation as *Clear Asset*, and then marks the data-block
    as [protected](../data_blocks.html#data-system-datablock-fake-user).
    This makes it possible to no longer have the data-block marked as asset,
    and still be sure it is not lost when saving the blend-file.