Shift for list-select is externally consistent with some similar ui’s, to a degree. For instance a quick test in the tree-view of windows explorer shows you can’t shift-click to select lists of folders at different hierarchy levels (yes, I’m sure some other file browsers, probably on other OSes or ones that replace windows explorer have the ability), but I’d wager that’s because it’s not as useful as it sounds. Think about it, it requires the items to happen to be in perfect order, expanded and or collapsed to the right level, and in order to be more useful than simply “select hierarchy”, you have to want to select a subset of children and/or a bunch of objects that aren’t connected hierarchically. Most of the time this comes up, you’ll want to select a subset of children of a single parent. You also can’t go and select multiple lists in different locations.
Inside blender using box-select for that is internally consistent. You can also go back and add more, remove some, open some hierarchy you forget then add those after. If we were to get the ability to scroll whilst holding down the mouse button for box select (as we can for dragging items), that would even cover the one case I can see shift-click being useful, that a subset of children, large enough that you have to scroll considerably to select them all.
Perhaps this is something that should be in the ‘industry standard’ keymap, which is more intended for external consistency?
Regardless, I doubt that decision will change because everyone’s enamoured with ignoring why blender does things differently lately. So, you didn’t say whether or not there would be any way to change the active object within a selection in the outliner, as there is in the viewport?
I don’t really want to go down a tangent of old vs new rhetoric- but I just want to point out that there’s no need to go into hypotheticals- there are plenty of examples of this type of interaction in software working effectively. Pretty much any other software that Blender might be part of a pipeline with behaves this way, and all of these other programs manage just fine without needing items to be in “perfect order”, expanded or collapsed to the right level, etc. Open up Unity, UE4, Photoshop, etc. Using windows explorer as an example is just about the worst idea I can think of since it’s extremely dated (in fact an update is coming out later this year, if i’m not mistaken)
If you mean quickly see objects in outliner that are way up or down in the list numpad . is the shortcut. Otherwise if you mean real zooming I don’t get how it could be useful
windows explorer was a simple example of something a vast number of people use, which illustrates why shift-clicking to select large lists in heirarchical trees isn’t as useful as it sounds.
As for the other software, that only provides reason to put it in the industry standard keymap. “managing just fine” hardly takes into account the number of times the feature is actually used, how often it is obtrusive rather than helpful, how often people run up against the limitations of it etc etc.
It’s a prime candidate for being on the industry standard keymap, as it’s usefulness over box select mostly arrives as a result of placing box select on LMB+Drag, creating large areas where box select is obtrusive to use (as it then overlaps with click+dragging items around). This is largely why it’s somewhat useful in other applications, even though it is more limited in other respects.
It’s simply the case that it is more limited to use shift+click to select lists than the current internally consistent method of box select, and we have a convention elsewhere in blender for what shift+clicking does that would be useful to have in the outliner (That I would hope makes it onto some key combo, if not shift+click).
well ever since I started working digitally I’m constantly presented with outlines or layer panels with one way interaction…scroll.
It’s all fine and dandy if you aren’t dealing with a lot of items in those lists.but when they become a lot,and you do need to move trough them quickly it’s a pain in the ass to be scrolling up or down.
All other 2D editors follow this rule.Even the DopeSheet has pan,zoom along with the usual scrolling to the left and to the right for keyframes. And I doubt you would see this “panning and zooming” feature of that “item editor” as useless.
Outliner has become very important in 2.8. Probably space in the default small Outliner Editor will be quickly filled in most of the projects becoming uncomfortable to work so the user will decide to create a new Outliner Editor area occupying all the vertical space of the monitor. Also, it might be good to have the ability to quickly expand/hide that Outliner “panel” according to the needs of the user (to gain space when you are not working with outliner for example), as does the N panel for example. So I think that as a quick solution to this, it could be good having the Outliner in one of the N panel tabs as an alternative.
I would like to fold/unfold multiple heirarchy with one click-drag.
In most parts of blender, like the properties panel, you can fold multiple menues by simply clicking the triangle icon and drag down. However, the last time I tried this on the outliner, it draged the whole ID block (just like for parenting).
In addition, I’ve noticed that the python API is quite poor for the outliner. I hope it supports nimble manipulation of selection, folding and other helpful operations so that add-on developers can improve the outliner by themselves.
exactly my thoughts,to me the outliner docked above the proprtties panel is of no use due to little space . You would rather have to open another on the sides to take all the vertical space. For that is crucial to be able to quicly hide and unhide it with a hotkey.
All the best for you Google summer of code project.
For me it is very important that you are able to sort alphabetically or sort by hand in the outliner.
In the moment that is inconsistent.
Only collections can be ordered by hand shifting them where you want.
Only objects get sorted alphabetically but you can’t sort them by hand.
Viewlayer don’t get any sorting at all in the outliner.
Please adress this and make the outliner consistent! I thing the code is there you only have to use it on all types ( objects, collections, viewlayer).
Thanks
But I am not sure if the filter menu is the right place to control them.
In view of the future and all the big updates that are coming with 2.81, 2.82…I’d like to brainstorm some ideas for a better system of “restrictions toggles” or “overrides” in a more general sense.
With overrides coming soon we will hopefully have a very powerful new system and way of working! For that we need a clear system with which we don’t loose the overview in complex scenes. We probably would like to have more of those toggles or attributes we can set per collection or even per object. It would make a lot of sense to control these overrides via the outliner.
But how are we are going to do that?
If we use the same system as today at some point we are going to end up with something like this:
That’s why I think it is not a good idea to have those toggles predefined in the outliner and you can only control their visibility via the filter menu.
I think it would be good to be able to manually “add” them via RMB click on a collection.
The first thing that comes to my mind is a sort of “tag” system like in Cinema4D.
You would RMB click on a collection and you would be able to add different tags. The tags themselves could be grouped. We could have groups like “restriction tags”, “render tags”, “custom tags”. Addons might be able to add custom tags.
I’m not sure if this is the right way but maybe someone would like to discuss this! I think it’s worth discussing because the outliner needs to be prepared for this kind of stuff!
At least on developer.blender.org developers always recommend not sharing screenshots of other softwares in design task entries to avoid legal problems. As this is an official Blender forum, perhaps the same recommendation is valid.
I’m not sure if this would be categorized as a UI papercut or something more…
But I think the outliner is pretty cluttered visually and difficult to read at a glance.
Would it be crazy to align the object data to the right, with a separator between the data and the restriction toggles?
I made a mockup
Original:
I am loving the expanded usability of collections and the outliner in 2.8 compared to 2.79.
One odd behavior that I’ve noticed is that when having multiple sub-collections within a collection, and I’ve turned on and off some sub-collections, when toggling the collection containing the sub collections on and off, all the sub collections get turned back on, as opposed only the ones that I have turned on initially.
I will only say one thing that I don’t know why is not already in the ouliner… select one object, go several objects done and shift+click to select all those objects at once, like in the file explorer, maybe there is a different shortcut… but so far I don’t find a way to select a list of objects that is not going one by one (if there is please tell me… and no, the box select is not a solution when you have 500 objects)
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)
