Ideas to improve Collections
The Collections concept was a great addition to 2.8, a lot better than what we had in 2.79 (groups specially were kind of useless tbh), but I think there's still a few things that could be made to make Collections even better:
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Give Collections their own transforms, basically, treat them as if a collection was an actual object, like a container for the objects inside it. That way we wouldn't have to hide the original collection and add instances to manipulate it as a single group of objects. Having transforms for the Collections is important because users could move, rotate and scale them without affecting the local transformations of the objects inside it.
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Double click on an object in the 3D Viewport should select all the other objects inside the same Collection (Just like Shift+G but faster). Currently is possible to setup this short-cut on the keymap but I think it would be better to have it as default.
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If Collections are treated as actual objects in the scene, then it should be possible to duplicate Collections directly in the viewport. Shift+D would do a full copy of both the Collection and its objects, Alt+D would create a linked copy of everything and Shift+Alt+D would create an instance of the Collection.
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Include Viewport shading options for Collection color (so the color tag in the outliner would be visible in the viewport too) and Collection random color (just like with objects, but assign random colors based on collections).
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Allow Collection instances to have a time offset, this would be incredibly useful for motion graphics and also when you have for example a character with a run cycle and want to have several instances all playing the same loop at different offsets/speed.
What do you think?
10 Comments
AN OBJECT CAN EXIST IN MULTIPLE COLLECTIONS. Your proposal does not take this into account. Probably Blender needs a real "Group" concept separate from Collections where this "feature" won't get in the way of the things you've proposed here.
Also almost all of these things have been proposed before. You should split up ideas into separate posts but make sure you're not posting ideas that have already been posted.
Are the proposals deleted or something? I looked for a while before posting and didn't find anything similar, only a proposal about groups that behave like they do in illustrator. And yes, I think a group object would be more useful but I don't think devs are interested in that, at least it doesn't seem so.
If you could move/copy collections i feel there has to be some sort of visual/UI indication that you are doing so. Collection random color/ Collection color as shading options I would really like. In fact all these are good ideas. I wonder if double clicking for collection select could have unintended effects, say you double click by accident then press delete and delete a collection instead of an object because some of the objects in the collection are not visible in the viewport. Collection instances with time offset sounds like something for collection nodes. wiki.blender.org/wiki/Modules/Physics_Nodes/Projects/EverythingNodes/Collection_Nodes
I didn't knew about collection nodes, that looks promising!
#1 add an object (Empty is most commonly used) and put the other objects as children of that. Transform the parent to get what you want. This is usually how it's done in Maya too, except maya automatically adds the empty makes the selected objects its children when you press "ctrl+g". There's probably an addon for Blender that does the same.
When using collection instances you do not need to hide the original collection. You can set the origin point the instances will use by selecting any object within the collection and going to object properties tab > collections section and click the arrow and use "set offset from cursor". That will set the origin to wherever you put the 3d cursor.
#5 would open up so many possibilities and It's already been suggested at least twice in the last 2 years.
29 October 2017 A Container Object (Real Grouping System)
31 December 2017 Select Collections / Groups as single object.
23 November 2018 A toggle to make a collection act as one object in the viewport
Todays Development Fund $160,940 MONTHLY CONTRIBUTION where users donations is smalest part, most part is some tough EPIC, Facebook, AMD. They don't need users donation to get money, they can work on any shit they want but what users asking for. They have made those useless collections when peeople were asking for groups, today we have 2021, but things stay same.... I think none of them even read those RCS topics. No one hear you, no one care, user.
Uh, I looked for a while before posting but didn't find those you linked... Anyway I don't think collections are useless, I prefer them over the old layer system in 2.7 and before, I just think collections could be better.
Not 100% useless, but still. I just showed that u may wait for groups another 3 years and not get it as well... Someone even gave this topic -1 for unknown reasons.
Actually it seems "collections" are just a better name for what used to be oddly named "groups" in 2.79. So I don't think that much money and new work went into creating the "collections" feature.
Today they can spend money/work time for groups but they work on anything but this. Look at this roadmap - in the end "As a teaser, here are a few ideas being considered: - Collection nodes"
Collection *** nodes. Aha, OKAY, they probably think that this collections something as it is for now are the top feature ever and nothing else will work better. Only thing need to do is to add collection nodes. 3+ years people still waiting for groups... I said already - they have money from big corpo, they don't hear what users asking for no more. My "gold" monthly $30 is like nothing - one cup of coffee with croissant, no one care of what I may asking for.