Right-Click Select This is a read-only archive
← All ideas
  • Published 4 Dec 2021

Outliner - Duplicate / Duplicate Linked

The Problem

The outliner does not feature duplication in right-click context menu for objects, and annoyingly, the Shift D / Alt D hotkeys do nothing.

The Solution

To make Blender more consistent and improve the user experience, the following changes need to be made:

  1. A new operator should be created specifically for managing the duplication of items in the outliner (similar to how 'delete' has a version unique to the outliner.)

  2. Duplication should be added to the right click menu of the item types that support the operations.

  3. The outliner should use Shift D and Alt D as the default hotkeys for the operations.

-Details-

  • This feature should minimally include support for collections and objects.

  • Other datatypes could be included for the sake of consistency, but practically, this only seems useful in niche circumstances. In these circumstances, copy/paste is probably adequate.

  • The new operator should determine what to do if called on a selection that includes both objects and collections.

    • In this case, I can think of multiple behaviors that would make sense, but my personal favorite is:
      • First, evaluate the duplication of all selected objects. Then, evaluate the duplication of each selected collection using a postorder traversal of the hierarchy.

  • Note there is a difference between Duplicate and Copy/Paste:

    • Copy then paste will move the copies to the active collection.
    • Duplicate should duplicate the selected items and maintain their position in the hierarchy.

--

Current Workaround

Currently, you can keymap the object duplication operations (as shown) to enable the hotkeys for object duplication in the outliner. Then, the right-click context menu can be used if you want to duplicate collections. Outliner Custom Keymap.png

This workaround is nice, but lacks polish for these three reasons:

  1. The hotkeys will only work for objects and not collections.
  2. The object duplication operation cannot be accessed through the right-click context menu in the outliner.
  3. The keymap must be configured manually.
100%

Development Status: Open

Upvote 14 Downvote 0
ethanhall
4 Dec 2021

4 Comments

Shimoon

TThe shortcuts doesn't work in the outliner indeed but you still can make copies and instances from the outliner :

  • Copy : drag & drop the transform object into the viewport
  • Instance : drag & drop the data object into the viewport

It also works with collections.

1
ethanhall Author

Thank you for sharing this tip. I learned something new.

1
IIIFGIII

Here similar Outliner - Improvement Suggestions | Posted 4month ago thought (to pin it here). Outliner really need more love, every workflows will benefit from it.

1
ethanhall Author

Thank you. I didn't see this in my search before I created the post.

The other post begins:

I use Shift-D to duplicate objects in the outliner. I would suggest to make this part of the default blender Keymap.

This was my exact thought at first, but after thinking about it further, I realized that there was more work to do than just adding the keymap. So, I made this post to clarify the details of what I think needs to happen.