Make all hidden objects selectable
I tried finding a suggestion for this specifically but could only find a bunch of suggestions to treat the symptoms of it.
Currently there is no way of selecting anything that is hidden. This is causing a snowball of problems.
- Animation curves disapearing when object visibility is animated
- Missing out on selecting hidden objects in hirearchy when using select hirearchy
- Making it harder to manipulate bools as simply hiding the bool object and moving it arround is easier for most.
Just to name a few.
If a user really needs to have objects protected the "Disable selection" switch is already in place and can be toggled for those objects.
Proposed solution:
- Make hidden objects selectable
- Don't deselect object on hide
Preferably by default or at least as a checkbox in user preferences.
7 Comments
I feel like this would only introduce issues of its own. You'd frequently end up transforming objects you can't see for a start. You'd be selecting invisible objects without knowing it when you select all, and would need the special option to not select them. How would selecting them from the 3d viewport work? If they are still selectable when hidden, then that kinda kills the point of hiding for me; if I can't hide an object to select something else behind/inside it, I'm almost screwed, and would need to resort to using the display in viewport toggle as a "real" hide option.
That's why there's the option to show all rather than only selected, and why the graph editor has its own visibility settings.
What are you doing that you want to select the hierarchy, do something to them all, but still have some objects hidden?
You can set the object to display as a bounding box or wireframe instead, to me these visualize the effect much better than if it were completely invisible. How is clicking around trying to select a completely invisible object better than a bounding box?
I've been working as a 3D artist for close to 20 years, I can't think of once that has ever happened.
You wouldn't. Hidden objects can only be selected where you can see them so most commonly from the outliner. I agree that having them selectable from the viewport would be strange ad very counter productive.
When you have a few hundred objects that are animated in a scene, show all is not really an option anymore
Re organizing mid project, not something that should be done but reality kicks in and it has to be done sometimes.
Also, deleting everyting in an hierarchy or just inside a collection.
Again, if you have a ton of them its a hassle to have to see all of them at ones. It would remove a few mouse clicks every time you are manipulating a bool wich in a day ammounts to allot of time.
No sorry. I ABSOLUTELY expect and want to transform the hidden objects. I can't believe there is a 3D artist anywhere who would not want selected hidden objects to transform. The inability to do this is exactly why this is a huge problem!
This is a problem to me too. I'm working on something with many parented objects, some backup versions of the objects without applied modifiers, and they are hidden for obvious reasons. I wanna make a duplicate of the entire thing with SHIFT D and it ignores all that is hidden.
I agree this should only work on the outliner (where you can see the hidden objects names) and make it have button to enable/disable selecting hidden items.
absolutely no way. thats too confusing. i cant keep track of stuff that i cant see.
As I stated in the suggestion, the option to have hidden objects selectable could be a preference that is off by default.
Also, you would not be able to select a hidden object from the 3D viewport, Only from the outliner or any other place where you can see the hidden objects name.
Hello, did you find any solution or addon for this? I am facing the same problem. I find it basic to be able to select the hidden components when selecting an entire group, even if it is only from the outliner.