Managing Objects in Blender is something that really need to thought about.

Managing Objects in Blender is something that really need to thought about.

So, the way objects get organized in other 3d software is basically identical. You build up trees with nulls/empty/locators and organize your stuff in branches.

There are some important things here:

1. The use of nulls let you transform the branches. They also used for animation.
2. The nulls can be set to hidden and that will always effects the child objects. That way you hide elements for later use or you animate that (blend in).

Now as a further organization without destroying the build trees there are layers and they are very important:

1. You can set layer to certain states like display in render or viewport. Affects performance.
2. You can select items based on the layer, or delete them, etc.
3. You have a global control over your scene, without search for items in different areas.
4. You can set render outputs of layers, so you get masks or overwrite shading etc.
5. You can put objects in more then one layer (not in every software), so they appear in different outputs or get quick access to them.
6. You can build hierarchies of layers, so you have second tree of organization.
7. Some software allows you do organize Shaders in Layers (C4D) which is very useful on complex scenes.
8. Other software let you organize animation channels on layers (Modo). So you can quickly access them.

Now that are the concepts that exist with a small exception in 3dsmax, where people used locked groups, because the software only very lately got an outliner. 3dsmax is old and creepy so forget about that. But keep in mind that Blender got a Pro Group add-on, just because people need a way to organize objects, beyond what Blender currently got.

In Blender new users will face a total different workflow and lot people have complains about that. So focus on what is possible.

First of all Blender can organize objects into trees and branches. Its working a bit different, so here are the points:

1. To parent items in outliner you need the hold shift to actually drop them to a parent.
2. Blender separates a lot parent options, which can be useful, but basically people are used to parent with keep transform, same for unparenting.
3. Deleting a parent will not remove the child, unless you have select them all. So its a two step task to get the same effect. Which can actually lead to some other problems.
4. When hide a parent, it won’t affect the child objects. You can get that by shift click on the eye symbol in outliner, but there is no shortcut.
5. The visibility of hierarchies can’t be animated (with parent objects!).
6. Blender has no Layer System like in other software, it got collections.

Now, Blender users have a different solution for layers, called collections. The collection function can basically found in some other 3d software and is called folders. Its basically a layer item that lives in outliner. Its main propose is to hide/unhide structures and to enable outputs on shading. It can be instanced like an object, which is basically also the biggest different to classic layers. A bit like C4D instance object, but without a transform. If you want to keep your workflow in Blender identical to other software, you would basically have to build a structure with an empty object and a collection as child. Then again an empty and again a collection, etc. Of course you won’t have a separated layer system that way, so its basically a one way street.

So I find that system to be incomplete. First of all, why is it done so complicated? Many problems could be avoided if Blender would work in this case like any other system. Now, don’t get me wrong. Its of course always great to have additional options and functionality. But as you see on the points above, there is a lot functionality missing. So Blender is actually cutting down things to a very rough and had to manage workflow. That is not more, its actually a lot less than useful. Now that doesn’t mean collections are wrong, they could be keeped. But they are basically folders. Hence the thing in Blender need to be improved should be the objects functionality for hierarchy, Outliner and the addition of a separate Layer system.

Here are the steps:

1. Make any object inherit transform, existence and visibility by default. No extra click. However keep that as an option. Sometimes it might be good to simple act different. Modo has a very good solution here, where you actually can keyframe all the options that parenting inherit.
2. Make Outliner become more clear. It is way to overloaded with symbols and big names. Most of the additional information on object (Vertex map, modifiers, animation) are of little use for the standard users, so add an option to make them invisible. That way it would become clearer to see if an object has Childs or not. Currently not so easy.
3. Colors are important for outliner. Add an option to color items in a tree, or make them use the layer color (if there is a layer system). Modo has very fine system with editor colors in outliner, fix colors that work through all the interface, making relation ships easy to see (Object, Layer, Shader, Textures with same color).
4. Add a Layer system that supports hierarchies and outputs. Its needed! Especially if you import things. That way people can only benefit. There is literal nothing to loose here.
5. Also color code item types. For example instances. How can you see that an item has an instance, how to find and organize them? Curves, items with particle system. That all look so messy now. For example it could be Object (120) for an object with 120 instances. Or a symbol in front of the name if the object is also a particle system, etc.
6. Blenders outliner can also be used to explore the scene. So shaders, textures etc. can be browsed. However it has very limit functionality on that. So you can’t replace selected textures or relocate them in outliner. Delete is often not available and the filter function is very limited. For example if you want to list all Empty Objets in your scene, to change them, it get even tricky to select the result when hierarchies had been used (That why I bring that up).

Finally, why I’m saying that. I’m a TD since 25 years. I have learned every 3d product that still exist and many before. I often had to switch software, so I went basically through hell every time a software tried to be special. Imagine, every manufacture of keyboards makes a different key layout? That’s not innovative that is torture. Think about how important it was for Blender to finally got the right mouse button to act NORMAL. Well you also should have changed the Z axis to Y, but that’s another thing. Blender is a fine software, but its also very young in terms of professional usage. We can only benefit if Blender gets better. Open source software has failed many times before being user friendly. I know its a lot harder to develop, but the benefit is that the users are more happy.