🏷️ Tags to organize and select in the outliner
I don't know if you have seen the interface and operation of this CAVALRY program. It is not a 3D software, it is dedicated to 2D motion graphic relatively new, the replacement to after effects at last.
I just discovered it and I found it so intuitive and modern that you could consider some features for Blender like the tag system to organize and select.
It has a free version so you can play with the program.
Better than explaining it is to see how it works so I leave you the link to the video.
5 Comments
This might come as a shock to you. Collections are actually "tags". You can setup 1 outliner to only show collections and drag items from another outliner into multiple collections and use them as tags.
The tags would reinforce the collections, allowing the flexibility to place different tags on the same element. In addition to having intelligent tags that automatically group according to the type of element.
IIt would also allow for example to assign a material or deformer to all the elements of a type of tag, it is not possible to place a material to an entire collection.
Pablo mentioned a "property chart" addon, which basically allows to change attributes per block of elements, that could be a functionality of a tag. youtu.be/jBsQB6ix34E
I did not know that the same element can belong to several collections that are not in hierarchy or nested.
Tags imply many-to-many.
Q1 - What happens if you have an element in multiple tags and then apply a deformer to that tag and a different deformer to another tag? Which deformer gets applied to the element that has multiple tags?
Q2 - you have an intelligent tag that automatically groups all mesh objects. You add a subdivision modifier at level 6 to that tag. Later you import a 6 million polygon object. How do you prevent your computer from crashing if that imported mesh automatically gets level 6 subdivision applied to it?
A1. Normally deformers are additive, if a second deformer is applied that one is added to it no?
A2. If I import a 6 million polygon somehow the program will manage and warn if there is any conflict.
I am going to take as reference the program that I put the link, every time there is a conflict in the bottom line it indicates me what type of conflict I can have. And as for the deformers, I add some deformers in the object and if it is in a GROUP, I put another deformer to the GROUP and it works very well, even with quite considerable elements it does not affect the performace (the GROUPS are what would become the collections in Blender).
I know that 3D is much more complex, but if you take a moment of your time to play with the program that I put as a reference you would understand me that capacity that they managed to make with this program.
A1: in what order are they applied?
A2: We've been begging Blender and other programs to do that for years. I honestly don't know why almost nothing does that already.
GROUP: We've been discussing groups elsewhere and I think the dominant argument is that REAL groups need to be added to Blender, separate from Collections. Your proposal mostly makes sense if it was limited to groups only but not collections due to the ability for an object to be in multiple collections (or call it an object can be tagged with many different tags)