I guess this idea belongs to the sync-feature (preferable as a checkbox):
An issue I have with the current Outliner is that you cant immediately tell what the object is that you are clicking on if naming isnt something you take care of ( = Circle.001, Circle.002, Cube.113, Torus.041 etc). And even if you do, it is impossible to differentiate many duplicated objects that are all over the place without searching in the 3D View at the same time.
My suggestion is basically the opposite of the wonderful autoscroll suggestion:
When clicking on an object in the Outliner, I want to see the 3D View automatically operate like “View Selected” (Numpad .) on the active item, so I can quickly decide if this is the object I am looking for.
I like to imagine that this combined with the Outliner autoscrolling reduces a lot of manual searching. Autoscrolling shows the list of related content, and the 3D View points on how everything looks.
zoom to selected in viewport while selected it in outliner should be a feature but not sure if that should be the default. There should be a better way to see what is your object selected.
Clicking mesh of an object in the outliner toggles edit mode, a handy way to enter edit-mode. It would also be handy to have the ability to enter sculpt mode by alt-clicking on it. (or some other shortcut)
I second that. Would be pretty handy being able to switch between objects without leaving sculpt mode or edit mode using this method (especially sculpt mode).
I think this is the other part of synching selections, the low priority one, of syncronizing the selections between outliner and Properties editor. Meaning if you click the mesh in the outliner The properties editor should update and I cant see it doing that without enter first in edit mode.
@okuma_10 zooming would be interesting, but its not one of my priorities for the summer. As others have mentioned you can search or press numpad . to quickly find items in the outliner so currently, zooming isn’t desprately needed. And zooming out would not have much of a range (it would quickly get too small to read without intelligently changing how the outliner is drawn, which would be a large tast I think).
@Antaioz@testure about the default and industry standard keymaps: I’m going to stick to shift+click for range select in the outliner even though it is not internally consistent. If the core developers down the road decide to change the keymap, its a very simple fix.
@YAFU I can also see the outliner being used more in 2.8x. It would be a great idea to have an outliner/data editing workspace even. Moving the outliner to the N panel wouldn’t be feasible because the outliner is and editor, not a panel. But I like that idea. Maybe it could be one of the workspaces that is packaged with Blender but not opened by default.
@TakahiroKomatsu that click and drag on the triangles is part of the plan
@machieb I really would like to make custom sorting! That’s my next big goal after synced selection
@pullpullson A tagging system is a good idea, but I’m not sure I see the outliner growing that drastically large anytime soon. I’m not to familiar with the upcoming overrides project though so I’m not super qualified to say I know anything about what could happen
@justastatue I like that redesign though it does cause a large space between where the name and children of the object are. I’m sure the UI team would have to look over it too, but I’m always open to ideas like that. Noted!
@dimitar I’ll have to look into that. Definitely not a desired behavior.
@karja It’s my current plan for synced selection to highlight what was selected in the outliner, but as mentioned an auto zoom to selected wouldn’t be on by default. There is an operator for that already in the 3D view and that may be sufficient. Though if there is a need for it I’m sure it could be added. I’ll add it to the list
@CandleComet That would be cool! I’m not sure how many hidden modifier keys we want in the outliner though. I’m definitely planning on adding more features to those icons and datatypes though.
Thanks again for the input everyone! I’ve officially started now, but ideas are still welcome.
Idea: shift + click or equivalent to select long list of objects, selecting the first one and then shift+click in the last one, like in the windows/linux file explorer
@Antaioz Sorry I missed that! If I’m understanding correctly you mean will there be a way to set the active object in the outliner like in the viewport?
If so, then yes! I’m working on it! Here is a GIF of my progress
I think that GIF answers the question, but maybe I’m mistaken.
Not only did you not bother reading the initial proposal, which mentions range selection, but you also ignored the reply that was made to you that said “it’s in the proposal” (paraphrasing) - all of this is not very constructive.
I think it would be really useful if the visibility/renderability of collections could be controlled with keyframes and drivers, so that you can very quickly keyframe the visibility/renderability of several objects at once.
I suppose the option in the conetxt menu could be easier implemented but yeah the one that projected the Cinema 4d UI was a genius. Too bad Cinema 4d modeling and game content creation was kinda forgoten. Stupid development. Still the current somehow limited tools cinema 4d has are some of the most refined out there.
Maybe it was already mentioned, but it would be nice to be able to organize the objects by type, so that all the lights remain together, for example.
It would be great to be able to sort by any attribute (position, size, visibility …)
Preview the object under the pointer, clicking the right button would be very useful, I think.
Normally, you have to select it and zoom in on the 3D view to see if it is the desired object, and it is not very productive.
@ZanQdo Setting the active camera is a great idea! I’ll add it to the list
@Regnas Each camera object has the camera datablock as it’s child. It actually shouldn’t be too difficult to set active camera by clicking on the icon. It would be similar to clicking on the mesh data icon to enter edit mode. This could be a feature, as well as the context menu.
@NoahJamesBradleySmit It would be nice to keyframe collections. I wonder if there is a reason why they cannot be keyframed at the moment
@another0ne I hadn’t considered double click as an interaction method. I like it
@wevon While sorting by type would be nice, there is already a filter by type feature. I’m not sure if sorting would be a large enough improvement to merit adding that feature. I’m not entirely understanding the preview object under the pointer. Do you mean to highlight the active object in the 3D view that is about to be clicked in the outliner?
