# Asset Modeling ### About this export | Field | Value | | --- | --- | | **content_type** | lesson | | **platform** | contentstack-academy | | **source_url** | https://www.contentstack.com/academy/courses/contentstack-assets-foundations/asset-modeling | | **course_slug** | contentstack-assets-foundations | | **lesson_slug** | asset-modeling | | **markdown_file_url** | /academy/md/courses/contentstack-assets-foundations/asset-modeling.md | | **generated_at** | 2026-05-28T12:30:00.525Z | > Part of **[Contentstack Assets Foundations](https://www.contentstack.com/academy/courses/contentstack-assets-foundations)** on Contentstack Academy. **Academy MD v3** — structured for retrieval; no quiz or assessment keys. #### Video details #### At a glance - **Title:** Asset Modeling - **Duration:** 5m 8s - **Media link:** https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/ughDfew4 - **Publish date (unix):** 1778505368 #### Streaming renditions - application/vnd.apple.mpegurl - audio/mp4 · AAC Audio · 113764 kbps - video/mp4 · 180p · 180p · 167403 kbps - video/mp4 · 270p · 270p · 205440 kbps - video/mp4 · 360p · 360p · 233340 kbps - video/mp4 · 406p · 406p · 257681 kbps - video/mp4 · 540p · 540p · 329321 kbps - video/mp4 · 720p · 720p · 448850 kbps - video/mp4 · 1080p · 1080p · 838663 kbps #### Timed text tracks (delivery) - **thumbnails:** `https://cdn.jwplayer.com/strips/ughDfew4-120.vtt` #### Video transcript Managing a digital library isn't about storing files, it's about understanding them. Because a file without context, that's just noise. 10,000 images with no ownership info, no usage rights, no product associations, that's not a library, that's a junk drawer. Asset modeling is how you turn those files into structured, searchable, governed data. There are two building blocks behind asset modeling, fields and asset types. Fields are the attributes you want to track, things like license expiration, resolution, language or SKU. Out of the box content stack knows basic file information, but your business logic, that's yours to define. You create fields once, choose the type, text, number, date, group, and then reuse them anywhere. Define it once, use it everywhere. Asset types connect a file format to the right set of fields, because not every asset needs the same metadata. A high-res image might need DPI and color profile information. A legal PDF needs a version number and a language. Showing both sets to every uploader would be chaos. Asset types fix that. They ensure each file only sees the metadata that actually applies to it. It's a clean UI, giving you cleaner data. So let's take a look at how we can go about creating a new field. Up here towards the top, we're still inside of assets, by the way, we can click fields. Now if we look at this list, you can see I already have all sorts of configured fields already available. However, we want to create a new field to track whether or not an image has an alpha channel or transparency associated with it. To do that, I can come over to the right and click new field. Then we can give it a name. I'm going to call this alpha channel. And then you can also provide a description if you think it's necessary. I think alpha channel is somewhat self-explanatory, so I'm not going to add a description, but I am going to choose the field type. I could open this up and type in a field type, or if there's one that I see that I want to use, which I do in this case, which is number, I can select it. Then on the right-hand side, we could enter a placeholder value, some instructional text. In this case, I'll type in zero means no transparency and one means transparency. We can add a default value. I'll add zero. If you wanted any help text, you could also add that. But once you're done, you can come over and click save field. And when you do, you'll be returned back to the fields screen, and sure enough, the new field you created is available. So now what we want to do is create a new asset type. And when we create the new asset type, we want to associate this field with it. Now, we could associate any of these fields, but importantly, we want to associate the one that we just created. And so if we come over to the asset types section, you can see that there's all sorts of asset types already configured, things like JPEGs, PDFs, Illustrator files. But what we don't have is a asset type for an SVG, a scalable vector graphic. So let's create that asset type by coming over and clicking the new asset type button. If you have an icon, you can certainly add that. You can name it, SVG makes sense in this case. The UID, if you want to change this, you can. I'll leave it set to the default. Again, if you want to provide a description, you can do that as well. The category in this case is going to be image. I'll just scroll down and choose that. The MIME type will be image slash SVG plus XML. And then the file extension will be SVG. Now what we want to do is configure the fields we want to associate with this asset type. So down here towards the bottom, I'll click the plus sign, then I'll click the existing fields button. And in this case, I can come over and choose any one of these fields. But in this case, I want to choose the one that we just set up, which is the alpha channel field. Then you can come down and click add selected field. And sure enough, there it appears. Now what you can do is come over and click save asset type. When you do, you'll see the SVG asset type here in the asset types list. If you click on it, you'll see the asset type. And if you scroll down, sure enough, that alpha channel field is present. #### Key takeaways - Connect **Asset Modeling** back to your stack configuration before moving to the next module. - Capture one concrete artifact (screenshot, Postman call, or code snippet) that proves the step works in your environment. - Re-read the delivery versus management boundary for anything you changed in the entry model. ## Supplement for indexing ### Content summary Asset Modeling. Asset Modeling in Contentstack Assets Foundations (contentstack-assets-foundations). ### Retrieval tags - Asset - Modeling - contentstack-assets-foundations - lesson 02 - Asset Modeling - contentstack-assets-foundations lesson ### Indexing notes Index this lesson as a primary chunk tagged with lesson_id "02" and topics: [Asset, Modeling]. Parent course slug: contentstack-assets-foundations. Use asset_references URLs as thumbnail hints in search results when present. Never surface LMS quiz content or assessment answers from this file. ### Asset references | Label | URL | | --- | --- | | Video thumbnail: Asset Modeling | `https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ughDfew4/poster.jpg?width=720` | ### External links | Label | URL | | --- | --- | | Contentstack Academy home | `https://www.contentstack.com/academy/` | | Training instance setup | `https://www.contentstack.com/academy/training-instance` | | Academy playground (GitHub) | `https://github.com/contentstack/contentstack-academy-playground` | | Contentstack documentation | `https://www.contentstack.com/docs/` |