@DanPool Yes, I’m planning on handling the dragging and drop with multiple items in the outliner. I’ve never seen that task before though, thanks for sharing 
@TheRedWaxPolice I will add those modifier keys soon Nice idea for a context menu.
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Another thing, no idea if it would be too hard to implement in blender, but in most outliners, when you have many objects and several objects are out of the view, if you start dragging an object and you reach the edge of the outliner, an auto scrolling starts happening so you can reach any objects. Like:
Would be nice to have that functionality.
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I believe we can scroll while dragging though, for me scrolling bit more intuitive instead of dragging to buttom to activate auto scroll.
I experienced this badly using Maya Outliner where I need to press middle click to move object and go down to keep auto scrolling run, though in Maya we can split the outliner into two area to handle such issue, which Blender can do that too.
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I love this. It’s what I miss in the outliner. Now it’s more productive. Thanks!
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Is Outliner / properties editor syncing planned?
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Yeah! But it takes some time, I think.
Here is the full list of ideas: GSoC 2019: Outliner Improvements Ideas
If don’t know already…
Nice improvements.
One question: What this new active highlight color means/indicates?
I mean, the selected object already has it’s color. 
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that’s the active object- the last object that was selected
Not sure about that. The active object seems to be the one highlighted with orange text, while this blue bar can be anywhere.
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Technically it’s the active Outliner item, from which keyboard input eminates from. To be able to navigate using the keyboard, one item needs to be the active one.
Ah ok. But still, it’s kind of an unexpected/unusual type of navigation. Normally the navigation with the keyboard is to switch the “active object selection” itself, not just the highlight.
Like:
Even most file explorers works like that.
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Yes, that comes with synced selection.
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I’ve just had a chance to play around with this branch for a bit. Great job! A couple of suggestions:
- Shouldn’t the Sync Selection be enabled by default? It seems like the more user-friendly option.
- The “invisible” filter is great, but is there no “render invisible” filter? I often want to re-enable the objects I’ve hidden from the render.
- In my opinion, the outliner really needs to make it clearer when there’s some kind of filter being applied. I often search for things, forget to clear my search and then get temporarily confused when my outliner isn’t showing everything.
Here’s one way it could be implemented:
I’m not a UI designer, so take these with a grain of salt. But it should be something bright and impossible to miss!
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After some failed attempts at selection syncing, it should be mostly working now! Still needs some extra features, but the base of it is there and works both directions now. Please test and share what you think!
@AlanNoble In the latest builds synced selection is on by default. Also, I think render invisible could be added to the invisible filter maybe, no need to have two. It would be nice to have some sort of indication on filtering.
@Regnas Try walk selection again, should be syncing now
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Hi Nate,
I’m thinking we might want a generic “invert” filter next to the regular filters, so that we don’t end up with a negative filter for each flag (unselectable, un-renderable, invisible…).
I’ve been working on an ad image that has 6,000 objects. The sync’d selection with shift select is definitely a nice help. I haven’t had any issues with it at all. I think the shift+walk selection would be a nice addition, but as it is right now, I am working much more efficiently with the improved Outliner. Thanks!
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Glad to hear the improvements help! Just added shift+walk selection for extending, so give that a try in tomorrows build
@Hadriscus I considered an invert filter toggle. It shouldn’t be too hard to implement, I’m just curious what some of the devs think on that one first. I’ll ask them sometime.
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@natecraddock Hi. Great work on the outliner, so far! But, I have identified some issues.
I have multiple collections in my scene. I select a few random collections with Ctrl+Click or a range of collections with Shift+Click. But, when I right click on the selection and choose ‘Select Objects’, it selects only the objects from the topmost collection in the selection. Can we make ‘Select Objects’ make a selection of objects from all the collections selected in the outliner?
Currently if I have to select objects from 10 collections, having multiple collections selected in the outliner doesn’t help. In fact, it makes it worse; regardless of on which collection you right click and choose ‘Select Objects’, it always selects objects from the topmost collection in the selection.
‘Select Hierarchy’ behaves even more strange. If I have 10 empties each with a few objects parented to them and if I select a few of them using range or random select (ctrl+click) and then right click and choose ‘Select Hierarchy’ it always selects the objects parented to the emplty that is bottom most on the selection in the outliner.
It would be nice to select objects from all collections or hierarchies selected in the outliner at once. It will a huge time saver.
By the way, I compile from source myself. I pull changes from this branch and the cycles procedural branch into the master and then build blender, since this works perfectly for the projects I work on. But I have also tested the above on both the master and the outliner build posted by you on graphicall.
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Thanks for raising these issues! I haven’t worked at all on any of the context menu operators, but once I begin I will see why these selection operators don’t work as expected. It’s good to hear that you are enjoying the improvements otherwise!
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