Sync selection in Outliner with 3d view
One of the gripes I currently have with blender and scene organisation is not seeing a reflection of what's selected in the viewport in the outliner and vice versa. I think it would be a great default behavior, but at the very least would like to see the option in preferences.
Similarly would also like to see an option to automatically keep object and mesh data names in sync as I never have a reason for them to not be.
10 Comments
Kinda 2 proposals at once here ;)
I agree with the first suggestion ... at least for prior 2.8. Now that linking is a much bigger feature and the outliner is more fleshed out, 2 different types of selection (outliner & 3d view) are absolutely necessary since you could select an object that is nested within multiple collections. Syncing these selections automatically is pretty much impossible because of that.
As a side note: Seeing your 3D view selection is at least now much more visible in the outliner in Blender 2.8, highlighting where your selection is nested, what types of objects are selected and how many.
@julien.kaspar: Pretty much impossible? It's really easy in python to select an object based on its name. It's really easy to get the name of an object that is selected in the outliner. I'm guessing there is a way to loop through all of the items in the outliner and select any and all that have a certain name in 2.8, though I haven't looked into that personally. I highly doubt that wouldn't be possible though. If it were, we would be very limited by what could be done with python in the outliner. But basically these are the only three elements needed to make this request happen.
Maybe poor choice of words on my part. It's possible yes, but it shouldn't be automatically done. There should be the option to transfer the 3d view selection into the outliner selection just like there is an option for the opposite but it's more prone for problems for the prior option. That's because it can select your object in multiple places in the outliner. How should Blender know which location of the object within the collections you mean to select? It would always have to select all of them which makes it useless/counterproductive to sync the selection automatically or even manually in some cases. The only way to make it useful, that I can see, is if you can easily and quickly deselect the nested objects in the outliner that you don't want to have selected afterwards without having to expand any collapsed collections, trying to look for them. But when just automatically sync the selection, it that would be a nightmare with lot's of problems waiting to happen. Having these separate section types are there for a good reason.
@julien.kaspar: Understood. I just opened the latest build and realized that this is already possible with the latest build of 2.8. I'm not sure when they added it, but it's there now. Select one reference to an object in either the outliner or the 3d View and all references in all collections are also selected.
@julien.kaspar: Turns out the selection is actually in sync with both its just the Outliner gets really inconsistent and unclear visually after a few actions which is maybe more of a bug than a feature.
So not clear to me was that the little orange mesh data icon highlight is actually what consistently shows the selection and is in sync across viewport, outliner, and objects in multiple collections (not so impossible afterall).
What's not in sync is the line highlight that only appears and dissapears when selecting and unselecting in the outliner and doesn't represent the actual selection. Pretty weird, seems like a bug.
@billyjonsmith: It's a feature, but an incomplete one in my opinion.
The icons were there already prior to 2.8 but are now sorted and way more useful. It gives you a quick view of where your "3D view selection" is nested in the outliner. It's not in sync with the "outliner selection" though. That's the highlight that's filling the whole item in the outliner and does not reflect your selection in the 3d view. Keeping these icon highlights in sync is easy and does not interfere with either selection type.
With the "line highlight" I guess you mean the outliner selection. Usually when selecting an item in the outliner - RMB by default - the item gets selected both in the 3d view and in the outliner but when LMB, box selecting or selecting it in the 3d view it only gets selected in one selection type. It's intentionally inconsistent but still too confusing. The purpose of either selection type is not immediately understandable or how to effectively select either one.
(Btw I am not sure what the exact terminology on these section types is but I think you understand what I mean)
@dpdpforlife: This has apparently been a thing for a long time in Blender 2.8 and we're already using the new Outliner functionality heavily at the Blender Animation Studio. It's more deep and functional than prior 2.8 but also slower and more confusing to use. There definitely needs to be a bit more development for this but also tutorials for the Blender 2.8 release since there is and will be a lot of confusion over the improvements and changes.
@julien.kaspar: I think we're on the same page but made this quick clip to illustrate how confusing things can get quickly. i.gyazo.com/f0953a9a7317353b0b2206fe19e98a1d.mp4
@billyjonsmith: While it's on my mind, dragging an object from one collection to another currently adds the object to the new collection while leaving it in the original.
Need to hold the Alt key after starting to drag to move from one to the other, maybe this should be flipped around as more often than not you just want to move an object and only under more special circumstances have an object in multiple.