It looks like you are confusing the selection of items displayed in outliner with selection of objects.
Synchronization with 3Dviewport is a simplification thought for a default workspace that only contains one outliner.
But you don’t have interest in keeping it for all outliners if you have several of them.
In theory, if you create 3 different outliners in your workspace : it is not to display the same things.
If they are not displaying the same things, there is no reason to expect them to have same selection.
What would be the interest of a synchronization between outliners ?
Imagine that using filters, you have one outliner showing only cameras, another one showing only meshes and another one showing only lights.
What would be the benefit to loose last selection of cameras and lights in 2 outliners, just because you made a selection of meshes in the other outliner ?
In this case, it is easy to understand that selections in outliners are not referring to same thing, although we are still talking about same datablock type.
I accept to have multiple outliners with filters: one with only cameras, second with only lights, third with all other, but
how highlighted cameras or lights in other outliners will help if properties displaying only for active object?
And all your highlights will loose after you click or select something in 3dView (I’m talking about default enabled “Sync Selection”).
So maybe I dont understand all benefits with highlighted selection in other outliners, that’s why I’m asking for real examples.
Example: multiple outliners, select something in each of them, then start to edit mesh, select other mesh - loose all highlights…
or you will always select mesh in outliner and then edit it? …will only work like this.
And I am saying that you should not keep it enabled if you create multiple outliners to deal with different objects types.
Yes. Current behavior with multiple outliners does not make sense with Synchronization because synchronization was not made for this case.
But the fact to change it to synchronize all outliners will not improve anything.
It is just complicating behavior by adding a synchronization between outliners that doesn’t exist for no gain, except a cosmetic coherence.
If selection are different in different outliners, you can apply to them all operations relative to Outliner’s right click menu and Outliner’s shorctuts. That has nothing to do with Properties Editor.
You can use one Outliner to only display Collections and enable/disable them with E, Alt E shortcuts. And another outliner to toggle states of modifiers.
So, except being confused by something that has no importance. Does it really worth it to ask a developer to work on that to the detriment of more useful stuff ?
Why do you create multiple outliners ? In what way that would help you to have same selection in all outliners ?
Example that confusing me every time:
I modify the model in edit mode, then switch to UV Editing workspace, edit selected mesh uv, then select other meshes (they highlighted), edit they uv, then switch back to my workspace and expect to see highlighted last selected meshes, but it highlights only my first mesh before switching to UV Edit workspace.
You are right. That is confusing.
That was a bad idea to make those highlighted lines more obvious than selected objects.
Now, because of synchronization, everybody is expecting them to always indicate selected objects.
For me, that is still just selection done in the editor. So, I continue not to care about it and just focus on what has a yellow/orange name.
There is no refreshment of outliner’s view, simply because there is no event to trigger it.
If you look at synchronization between Outliner and Properties Editor : that is not a reciprocal relation.
You select a data in Outliner. Active Properties Tab is updated.
You select a Tab in Properties Editor. Data is not highlighted in Outliner.
Here, there is a synchronization to make selection of items in Outliner triggering a selection of objects.
But selection of objects do not always trigger a selection of items in Outliner.
Selection in Viewport is doing that. But that is the only editor who does that.
If you select an object in Animation Editors, that does not change highlighting in Outliner, either.
There is simply no recursive update. Selection of objects is just updating names colors in Outliner.
I suppose that kind of recursive updates would have a cost in terms of responsiveness.
I don’t know what would be the cost of an update during workspace switches.
But basically, problem is there because it was neglected or thought as negligible. Not because there would be an intention to keep that for a specific usecase.
Yes. Synchronization is partial.
If you are searching selected objects by searching blue lines, you will be annoyed.
But if you only trust yellow/orange names, you are not annoyed.
Are there any enhancement plans for the Outliner for 2.93? Considering bcon1 ends next week I imagine we can’t expect any new feature that was discussed or requested, but is it feasible to have e.g. some polishing of the context menu?
Just noticed that I’m browsing the hierarchy and renaming objects with arrow keys and F2, without touching the mouse or looking away from the monitor. There’s always something to add, but it’s a bit of good UI right here. Efficient and not draining attention capacity.
@natecraddock Sorry to bother you. I suddenly remembered about manual sorta being something that was not able to make it in in previous releases. I was curious, is this still a target for the future?
Last years one was pretty successful, but things like manual sorting or child highlighting in collapsed hierarchies are still on a lot of peoples wish list I guess.
I could be mistaken, but I think a participant can only do the same topic twice. There might also be a rule that a single participant can only be on GSoC twice. I don’t remember which it is, or if it is both.
Either way Nathan has done 2 GSoC events so he would not be able to do another Outliner project. If there would be another Outliner GSoC it would have to be from someone else. Or so I believe.
Hey all, I love seeing enthusiasm for this project still!
It’s true, that after doing two GSoC projects I am no longer eligible for participation, and there isn’t an Outliner project for this summer. So currently there isn’t a large focus on fixing the outliner that I’m aware of. Though some new operators are being added with the asset browser which is nice.
Regarding the unfinished features from last summer: I absolutely would love to keep working on the outliner! The way things worked out this summer though, I took a job during the break from school that is taking the majority of my time, along with a bunch of other projects. There’s only so much I can do as a student and volunteer contributor, but I enjoy when I do get to help. It’s been hard for me to be away from contributing to Blender this summer, but I do want to come back soon and keep making the outliner better. I can’t make any promises, but maybe within the next month I’ll have freed up some time to contribute again.
Also, I think any future work would be better discussed elsewhere, so I’ll close this.