When used restrict rendering from outliner, prevent also viewport rendering.
Currently, the only way to prevent cycles viewport rendering objects is to hide them. (H) I think this is wrong because often we need to display objects for example with "max display: wireframe" Physics bounding boxes is a good example of that kind of situations. We wanna see them in the viewport when not rendering, but we don't wanna render them, not even in preview. So that kind of situation I would click the small camera icon in outliner (Restrict rendering), but it behaves not in an expected way.
Now you would need to add a transparent material to it, which I think is just an additional not needed step if we had this better solution.
7 Comments
It seems that you posted this proposal before asking on support websites (or perhaps you did and nobody answered ? Tell me if that was the case). The Camera icon is meant for a rendering process that is separate from the viewport. Making it affect the viewport would break the consistency of the system and make it definitely confusing when handling big and complex scenes.
But what you're asking is already doable without any workaround such as making a transparent material. You can simply uncheck all the boxes under Cycles settings in the object's properties (this affects both the viewport and the final render).
As of Blender 2.79, wireframes and GUI controllers are still invisible in rendered viewport mode, but when 2.8 comes out with its overlay engine, you'll be able to see and control them on top of the Cycles render.
@Caetano Veyssières: I made searches and found no solution, so I made a conclusion that it's how I expected based on what the UI shows. The UI is kind of misleading us with the icon. The icon and its tooltip are telling the story that it restricts the rendering, but when we render it in the viewport, it's not doing what it says or it's not telling clearly what it does. Now there is none fast way to set up objects on and off from viewport. "object object" tab is hidden and you don't have any other indicator to see what is happening, expect to render or going to see that menu separately from the settings for every object. That's why it is very important that we could have in outliner do this task. Especially when it's already doing the task "half", it restricts the rendering only in some specific cases so it wouldn't hurt to let it do it also in other cases.
@Artturi Mäntysaari: Sorry I'm having a hard time understanding this message. Could you edit it and make some corrections ?
@Caetano Veyssières:
In nutshell: I think this is just the kind of information we would wanna see in outliner about every object? We wanna see if it's rendering or not, but when we see that it actually is rendering (in the viewport.) when the UI is telling that it's not, it's misleading information.
@Artturi Mäntysaari: The confusion comes from the fact that the word "Render" is used in 2 different places with different meanings :
However, the viewport/rendering system will be so different in 2.8 that this idea/remark may be invalid by the time it comes out. Read Julian Eisel's comment here for more info.
Aside from that, did you solve your issue using the Object's Cycles Settings ?
@Caetano Veyssières: Yes. I was able to figure it out later. I actually also knew about that before, but because the setting is in so different place, I forget it's existence. Thanks btw for the link.
Why is hiding (or Restrict viewport visibility , as it's labeled in the outliner) not sufficient?