GSoC 2020: Outliner Discussion and Suggestions

Not sure if possible, but it would be awesome to have this ported back into 2.83 LTS…

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It is difficult that it will happen.

First because it is an unnecessary investment … 2.83 is destined to be abandoned to expiration,
Second reason because this new code will have to mature (solid debugging and optimization) …
You have to wait for the next LTS.

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As some already mentioned make Delete Hierarchy the default behavior, like in every other software when I delete a folder.

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I tried also to simplify the restriction toggles.
It happened to me and probably to many beginners to render a scene and see all the objects that I have hidden.
Because I didn’t know I had to toggle in EVERY hidden object to “hide in the render scene”.

This double step is unfamiliar, unintuitive, and time taking.
I rendered an animation yesterday and I forgot an object toggled, I lost 4h of work because I realized it only at the end.

My proposal is this:
Wouldn’t be more intuitive to render ONLY what I see in the viewport (like every software out there)
and set the (advanced and way less common) behavior of hiding or viewing a specific object even if it’s hidden in the viewport as a restriction (exception) toggle?

Basically you won’t need to toggle every time the “disable in render” button but only when is an exception.

Like this:

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Here another example

What I would really find useful would be:

The ability to sync eye-monitor-camera icons could also be mapped to a modifier key, say I press Alt+Click on the eye (or camera, or monitor) and all them go along together on or off

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I suggested this here, but it doesn’t seem very popular (Blender is a tool for experienced Blender users, it’s not built to be an intuitive tool for beginners to learn unfortunately):

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I agree. And not only for beginners. It is even worse since the default has been changed to hide the renderability toggles. Many people will not even know why their hidden objects are still rendering.

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I have a archviz project right now, which is heavily nested.
eg. every peace of furniture is in separate blend file linked into a scene, which is itself linked into another scene containing all the render setting and environment.
I constantly fix problem related to restriction toggles. Еighter something is missing, or some object that is supposed to be hidden is visible. What makes things worse, previewing the render with Cycles in the wiewport uses viewport settings and you cannot catch the mistake before doing F12 render.

I do not agree that complex use equals “advanced”, and I do not consider myself a beginner.
Right now visibility toggles require constant management by the user.
I had a proposal trying to fix the problem, where I point out the problems with the current system.

the proposal from @Breccia has some merit. There are way too many toggles.
I would also really like to be able to link :link: viewport and render visibility so I can only use one column

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I really loved this button and I didn’t fully understand why it has been removed.
image

Do you use Collection Manager addon?

Double clicking text-blocks could switch text-block in the Text Editor:
image

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Is this also mentioned?
When relocating objects with parented objects inside you need to select all objects that inside to relocate properly. It’s so inconvenient and (if I not wrong) it only blender have such “feature”…
this…


should work like this one except selecting all stack

or I something not understand with this links feature?

Also here is a bug or what is it?
If I drag and drop object with parented objects to another object (in other collection), it drop some parented object also.


and the question with the last video:
How to relocate Object with parented objects to another object completely, without making links…?
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Man good thing you look at these issues!
This drives me mad sometimes, your suggestion is much better, drag the parent to another collection should bring the childs along by default, otherwise it just seems broken, imho.

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I’ve just seen the last Pablo Vasquez update, and come up with this mockup to color viewport with collection colors. (sorry it’s not pixel perfect :dizzy_face:)

Another thing that could use some improving is the filter section, some obvious things are missing (icons, sorting manually… etc)

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So it’s probably too late to post in this thread now, and it’s perhaps the wrong place anyway, but:

bild

I have a file with a lot of collection instances (generated by import_3dm).

  1. If I select a collection instance and then in the outliner do “show active”, the outliner correctly jumps to the instance.
  2. I then filter by its name to find the “original” collection (don’t know of any other way… a “show link source” would be nice, though it’s perhaps not very common to link within the same file?)
  3. Then I select the original collection in the outliner and choose “select objects”.
  4. The 3D view now correctly shows the objects highlighted, but even if I remove the name filter, the outliner still jumps to the instance if I choose “show active” again.

Also, I’m guessing that even in 2.90.1 no “linked” icons (the chain looking things) made it in? Because right now, it’s terribly confusing (and it would seem logical to click on the link icon to jump to the original).

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I have a pretty simple proposal, please add Batch Rename under the right-click options. The current menu location has no relation to the Outliner, and the hotkey takes way to much troubleshooting.

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I don’t know if it fits here, but it would be nice to have the shortcut for new collections ( C ) mentioned in the context menu of the Outliner Editor. I only found out there’s a shortcut for this action because Pablo Vazquez mentioned it in a Blender Today stream.

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@natecraddock Was it a decision to not do the drag and drop from the outliner into the sequencer, or did you run out of time?

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Yes. Sadly I ran out of time to do some of the smaller extras. But! I still think that improving the outliner sequence view is a good project. Drag and drop is a good start, but I think that the outliner-vse connection could be made even better than that. I don’t use the VSE regularly enough (or with complex enough projects) to make a detailed design task, but if one were made and approved I would be happy to help.

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