For future reference this isn’t typically a forum for asking directly for blender questions. It’s better to ask for help on https://blenderartists.org/ or other such sites. Cheers!
Thanks for your response. And I have noted your suggestion, I will stick to that forum until I get to the point where I maybe suggesting feature design. Thanks again.
Is there any plans to add so we can link and unlink lights from objects as well? Having only the ability to link and unlink objects from lights as it is now is nice, but in some cases quite cumbersome to work with.
Just for clarity: This forum is not meant for feature requests either 
. Use rightclickselect.com for that.
This forum is only meant for discussing development or developers requesting feedback.
Was that directed to me? Wouldn’t really call it a feature request, but instead more of a question directly related to this development of light and shadow linking.
I’m not very clear what the difficulty here is, but it seems like the lights should each have their own collections. User can put either objects OR collections (or both) into it. Novice users will just put individual objects. To get complex behavior with many lights, experts can make collections and put those collection into all the lights. Collections that are driven by wildcard pattern matching of names could be added to Blender for even more powerful systems.
In addition there should be a toggle as to whether the collection is the objects that are lit, or the objects that are not lit. This would allow the empty collection to either mean nothing is lit or everything is lit (the second state would be the default for any new lights).
USD already is implemented exactly this way.
hi, when I use Clean Up, it occasionally has a probability of cleaning up the collections in the light links together, causing me to either have to reset the links for each light, or give up on the clean up, and I try to set that collection of lights as a pseudo-user, and there is still a probability of it being cleaned up!
This is a bug, please make a bug report about it, and include exact steps to reproduce/a file to reproduce the issue with.
The easiest way to make a bug report is to:
Help -> Report a bugI don’t know if this is a bug, so I’m just giving my feedback here on this thread related to light linking. When hitting the “+” icon on the light linking tab, it should show a list of mesh/objects in your project right? It does not work even If I try it in blender 4.3 beta.
It works if I have a plane selected first, shift click a light and click the “+” icon. I don’t know if users know about it. Maybe it’s a good addition if hitting the “+” icon will show mesh/object list.
If I remember correctly, the code is written such that pressing the + button will add all selected objects to the linked collection.
So the fact it doesn’t show a pop-up to add objects is expected, although it is understandable annoying in some situation.
I’m currently testing on 4.3, pressing the plus button will not add selected objects because I need to select the light to access the light properties for light linking. If you click an object, you will then be directed to that object properties with light linking properties too.
The plus button works if I do this. Just dragging the object in the outliner and letting it go to itself and press + so it will be adde to the lights light linking panel.
You can select an object by clicking on it, then use Shift + Click to select more objects. The last object you select will be the active object, and will have it’s properties shown in the object properties editor. So if you select your light last, then it will be the active object. Here’s a video showing that:
There are two others ways to manage the light linking collection. You can drag and drop the object into the light linking UI. Or you can create your own collection to manage the light linking.
You have provided a video example, Thanks for this!
In complex cases it is useful to hide the required objects set, pick the light and unhide the selection for getting proper selection.
Or picking light with picking selection and adding objects to it with non-picking selection type.
I’ve not found a way yet to remove a large number of objects from a light link at one time. How is this done?
Just curious why you don’t make secondary light linking collections so you can disable or delete it? Having an object in multiple collections in a normal workflow… does this not work for light linking?
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/scene_layout/collections/collections.html
"Link to Collection: Shift-M
Add selected objects to a collection, while keeping them in their current collection. This way objects can appear in multiple collections. A new collection can be created in the pop-up."
Honestly, it’s due to my work preferences of not ever having objects in multiple collections if I can possibly avoid it. I do use collections for scene organization, but also having to use them for various other features brings about another level of overhead that I don’t want.
I know some people feel “objects can be in lots of different collections” is a good feature for them, but I don’t care for it.
Such kind of a crosshierarchy, for example contradicts collaboration conditions.
Well, yes, there are lots of datamanagement faillures, which makes challenging using software for high damanagement level productions types, like collaboration + imported data production conditions.
Collections, for example, was a huge datamanagement faillure where even basic CG demands are still not covered (also they are too flexible to be properly manageable - for example it is much easier to tangle hierarchy with crosshierarchical dependencies than untangle it, there are no proper tools provided for untangling)
It is also much harder to keep data structures with crosshierarchical dependencies in mind to operate with them or read such kind of structures from data composition.
Everything (including lightlinking) is designed mostly for primitive usecases (like a glare in the eye of a character) , but this is quite global separate problem. Regular feature-oriented developers cant detect or resolve such kind of a problems, since the ability to do that assumes intense high datamanagement conditions level production background and participation, gaining which contradicts raising deep coding or deep artistic skills. The higher datamanagement conditions production you participate the higher you appreciate data manageability over flexibility, in the same way you start appreciate code clarity and readability while the more experienced coder you became as a programmer.
It is not that easy to find a system designer on a market - a person who could possibly manage those problems during system design and preventing them (while finding, say, an artist assumes simply looking at portfolio).
System design is not very pleasant work by itself - it is similar to persuading people to eat vegetables instead of sugar. Too much responsibility and no fun.
Good question. Link collection to a view layer, remove objects from the outliner, unlink collection from the view layer is the easiest work-around i can think of.
It should be possible to implement multi-selection in the list widget we use.
We also initially had a way for better overview in somewhere in the roadmap, but, unfortunately, there is currently no development power available for that.
The current collection-based light linking information can’t be reused across different scene files, something would be quite often in a sequence production. Also if the lights being appended into a new blend file, all its linking collections and their children will also be imported into the scene collection, which is quite annoying.
Is it possible to make the light linking information store as a table/dict in the light, and apply to objects by naming/path detection when toggling render? Something like katana does. How does this sound like
