A Container Object (Real Grouping System)

My two cents here.. As others have already said, this concept is similar to 3ds max and maya, and in my opinion is absolutely needed. It's basically the same of parenting objects to an empty (infact in maya if you press ctrl+g, an empty transform node is automatically created and selected objects are parented automatically). But the whole process should be done with one click, and there should be the possibility to "lock" and "unlock" the individual child objects selectability (Like in max if i'm not wrong). Collections are great but they are not affecting the transformation hierarchy (they are more like maya SETS).

This post should have 1248 votes. That's been 4 years and still no groups :( How do people do complex projects without this feature even ?

Definitely useful! Coming from a Maya background, groups are what I miss most in Blender.

I really wonder why this topic is not higher rated and more discussed. Or even already in Blender for years. I tried to switch from C4D to Blender several times because it's just such a great piece of software. But not having a real grouping system is so frustrating and makes using blender so slow and unwieldy. How do you apply a modifier like subdivision surface to multiple objects in a group? How do you array an object which consists of many individual objects? Or deform such an object and animate the deformation? It's kind of a mystery to me. I tried to find a way to solve this in a different way, but I didn't really find anything that satisfy me. I know I can't make demands on a free software. I just really wonder how everybody uses blender, because in C4D I use this kind of groups all the time.

I've been waiting for this for years and it never got implemented. Instead we got slow and clunky collections now......

I would really like this, as well. I have an add-on that creates this type of functionality, but it should really be built-in.

I just want Group Pro addon finally die already because of it's lame realization which corrupt files Personally, I love this one more

blender.community/c/rightclickselect/Fzbbbc/select-collections-groups-as-single-object

I'm really liking this idea. Also I think this could fit into the linking workflow/solve some of the current limitations. For example when you link in a charakter you could but him inside of a container and then add for example a subsurf or armature modifier(Something you can't do to a linked mesh right now from what I know). The linked mesh doesn't get modified, but still you can work with it non-destructively in the new scene and modify it in a way, which wasn't possible before.. Not sure if this would fit into some of Blenders core principles..

This is nice of course, but how to avoid conflicts with current parenting system?

This would greatly simplify dealing with complex objects as well as improving the readability of the outliner.

Did this ever get going? I tried coming to Blender multiple times but the lack of groups (which is vital for scene management in any serious VFX pipeline) has always been a problem. The parent to empty workflow doesn't really work. With large assets that have hundreds of objects you need to be able to have groups that aren't cluttering the viewport. Also it's odd that duplicating an empty doesn't seem to dupe the children unless you go through and manually select all items. Finally you really want to be able to have all children highlighted when selecting the empty so you can see what you are about to move.

An addon that makes Collection instances more like groups gumroad.com/l/qinstance

Still can't believe that Blender team intentionally dropped such a crucial and base thing. Seems like users have to suffer for decades, really sad, just from day to day, from year to year. For those who says something about containers and empties, now try to copy your group and see what happens!!

This is probably the most underrated ticket I saw. Hoping that it gets the attention it deserves one day.

It would be nice to have a grouping system. We can sort of imitate that with Emptys, parenting, and instancing but that requires a lot of manual tedium. The point is that it slows down the workflow and automating it would be super helpful.

Anyone struggling with the lack of this feature in blender - check out this addon (For Blender 2.8): blenderartists.org/t/quick-instance-addon-grouping-like-workflow/1163351 It works quite well.

How the (censored word for heavy emphasis) do I pledge my support for this idea!? Am I the only one not seeing an upvote button?

This is absolutely needed, blender is trying to get away without having a grouping system by having all these workaround that make scene management a pain .Its such a proven and powerfull feature that its a fundamental at this point. With this collection system I ALWAYS end up having tu juggle between my source collections placed at world origin and the collection instances placed in my scene having to turn visibilities on and off if i want to edit them... modeling with symmetry instances/groups is also a pain, animating instances/groups locations... etc This is really hurting blender's ability to be used on complex scenes.

At the very least Collections should act as a parent with its own local coordinates and origin point which can be moved rotated and scaled.

Seriously to the people that don't think this is necessary, it might be difficult to understand how transformative this is withouy having tried it so go and try any other 3D package software (actually every 2D package software have groups too) You wont believe how much hassle you went through all this time because this wasn't here.

Democracy at Blender's is like democracy in European Union. 95 percent want something changed, but the 5 percents who do not want change win.

We need this!

Isnt it half way done with collections? Just add a collection Object with the collection items wich is not an instance. And an Collection Instance object.

THIS type of grouping will be such a helpful tool for rapid level design prototyping.

Looks like just a cumbersome and unintuitive feature that adds nothing to the funcionality of the software.

I feel that there are a lot of confusion about groups/collections/hierarchies - mostly because of default outliner view in 2.8+ and of naming conventions: rendereverything.com/blender-groups-confusion-about-collections/

I shared this post on Twitter, I would encourage you all to do the same, get the word out there, ask people to upvote this, point out how useful this would be, share share share and maybe we can boost the upvotes to make this one of the most demanded features ever, as it should be.

Very important. I was dumbstruck at using collections a while ago and thinking "WTF is this good for when you can't use it to group move, group select and group transform? Why do we have to use the fiddly parenting system, wasn't collections supposed to solve that?" When I have a collection of objects, I want to be able to group them simple and fast and treat them like one object, a very simple request, right?

This would be awesome.

What if I want to place my 3d cursor at the media point between a child of one container and a child of another container. If i cannot select objects outside of the current container I cannot do something like this without several extra steps and temporary objects. Am I allowed to add a new object outside of the current container while I am within the current container?

How do you turn off the parent modifiers being propagated to the children?

It would be nice to be able to have multiple object with the same name in this group hierarchy. There is a proposal on this topic here : blender.community/c/rightclickselect/Qtfbbc/

Container system totally make sense.

and after that they advertise the program as a breakthrough and so on from all sides .... the sectarians ... hope that the program will be completed; the strange thing is that basic functions do not work, but at the same time all efforts are invested in complex functions of meaning, from which there is no point until the program is completed ...

Love it!

I created my own request for the same blender.community/c/rightclickselect/mRfbbc/ Then I found this, so I upvoted it. I definitely agree.

This could be implemented inside the already built in collections, actually its really a bummer that collections don't work this way right ou the box.

What you describe as containers sounds similar to a layers for me, especially in combination with layer groups. I wonder if the ideas here could be implemented as features for the new layer manager?