@natecraddock Had a really interesting discussion with some maya seniors and some useful feedback came out of it regarding how parenting can be smarter
Specially noteworthy is how we can not “drop in” or insert between existing hierarchies in the outliner. For that we need to unparent the existing relationship and parent everything again in the correct order.
did we totally forgot about locking location/rotation/scale ? a all in one lock toggle inrestriction could be really really really useful
Wasn’t collections one of the options in the new batch rename tool? It’s a pain in the butt having to rename a bunch of collections. Can we have this… pretty please?
there is no way to select a collection by his name in outliner
bpy.ops.outliner.item_activate() works with mouse but no parameter to use a name.
if you do a collection, active one, this is not enough to make work:
bpy.ops.outliner.collection_duplicate()
it must be already selected
kind of code: (in a class)
@classmethod
def poll(self, context):
ar = context.screen.areas
__class__.area = next(
(a for a in ar if a.type == 'OUTLINER'), None)
return __class__.area
def execute(self, context):
#'Collection' is not active
layer_collection = context.view_layer.layer_collection.children['Collection']
context.view_layer.active_layer_collection = layer_collection
#still not enough
bpy.ops.outliner.item_activate({'area': __class__.area})
bpy.ops.outliner.collection_duplicate({'area': __class__.area})
return {'FINISHED'}I’m not sure I completely understand what you are wanting to do, but this can all be done from bpy.data which is faster than calling bpy.ops
import bpy
copy = bpy.data.collections["NAME"].copy()
bpy.data.collections["OTHER"].children.link(copy)
Although this links the child objects instead of making copies. But that could be replicated too with bpy.data.
I would like to suggest an idea for the visibility shortcut to be a toggle, same as the “eye” icon.
I personally prefer working with the shortcuts workflow. but unlike the 3d view in the Outliner we can select hidden objects but there is no way to unhide only the selected ones, ‘Alt+H’ unhides everything…so making ‘H’ hides & unhides selected objects/ collections would improve the workflow a lot especially when you want to invert the hidden, select all and hit ‘H’.
I am currently working on a scene with many objects organized in nested collections and I have hard time isolating the part of the scene I am working on.
Is there a way to isolate specific collection, similar to objects local view.
I know I can right click a collection > select Objects and then isolate them, but I find I cumbersome.
Yes like to photoshop.
Thank you dupoxy, I must have missed this option.
The discoverability could be better, but I am glad it is there.
Ctrl+ clicking on th “Eye” or the “Monitor” icons does that for Collections.
Is drag and drop from the Outliner to the Sequencer planned?
Not that I am aware. Do you mean dragging sequences into the sequencer to duplicate/instance them?
Yes, like it currently is possible with 3d objects. It this would possible the outliner actually could be used for organizing source material. Ex. all footage from one “screenplay-scene” could go into one Blender scene, like it was a folder.
So depending on the answer I have a question or proposition. Currently user can navigate through the collection tree with arrows. My initial understanding when I started using Outliner, was that with navigation automatically follows selection of the object. It’s unusual that it doesn’t, but maybe there is a reason for it.
My proposal goes that the selection of the object be made with [ENTER] key (question implied, I mean, its so basic and natural…).
As of now I don’t see the point of using arrows for navigating inside Outliner if I can’t even select the object.
If it would be possible to drag and drop media files into the sequencer, the outliner could be used as a bin system, and this way the users could have access to all footage and have it nicely organized in scenes:
@silex Arrow key navigation does select but, it does not activate. This is a known issue and will sadly not be able to be resolved by 2.83 because it requires a large refactoring of the selection code. I have nearly completed the refactor and it should be in by 2.90, and immediately after that the walk navigation will work properly. 
@tintwotin I think that would be great! I’m not sure on how all the details would work, so maybe a new topic here or a developer task could drive some development there.
Here is another one, why bones don’t have hide option in the outliner too? they only have the restrict visibility option…it would be nice if they have more functionalites too; like copying constraints for example.
That’s good to know that the issue has got attention, thanks.
There’s the Ctrl + H shortcut in the 3d viewport which pops up a menu where you can choose a collection to isolate it (it only shows top hierarchy collections though)
