[VinLAURiA]

Real good work you’ve done so far in terms of usability; I’ve gotten much further in just an hour or so than I ever did after hours upon hours of trying to learn vanilla Blender. However, one thing I’ve noticed is that the Outliner is still really unintuitive to use. I tried to select a range of items by the usual method when it comes to this – click on the first item, shift-click on the last item – and then drag the group into another object to parent them to it. Something that should’ve taken me a couple seconds at most. Instead I was fumbling around for several minutes just to get everything I wanted highlighted and still never figured out how to parent things this way. This is obviously a holdover from vanilla Blender, and I imagine some people are used to it, but just the option to have it work in a more logical manner would be appreciated.

[Reiner]

Hi VinLAURiA,

Thanks.I hope Bforartists is of use for you

What you talk about is core functionality. The Blender outliner simply doesn’t have this functionality yet. And so it is missing in Bforartists too. To change core functionality is ufortunately out of scope for us. We lack the manpower and knowledge to rewrite Blender at this level. And so i fear you have to live with the current behaviour. At least until the Blender developers have another crack at extending the outliner functionality. Sorry that i have no better news.

Kind regards

Reiner

[Draise]

There is an context operator that selects what is highlighted from the outliner (not sure why they don’t select directly on highlight) – maybe that could be scripted in with a python script on loop?

I could be.. dreaming. Maybe this will be best going to the Blender developer area directly.

:dance:

[Draise]

Maybe a quick icon for “Select” operator added to the outliner header bar instead of a hidden floating menu right click workflow that is alien to most workflows?  (So it’s easy to figure out that the Outliner needs to have things actively selected after highlight)

Maybe also add a button for Border Select? or add the Border select in the Rclick menu? (to supplement the Shift+Click for list select and have it discoverable from the outliner right off the bat)

It is kinda ridiculous that you have to press A to clear highlights + B to Border select, to then highlight, + Rclick to open hidden outliner options + mouseover to select “Select = select a group of stuff. You could save this step with the two icon buttons that activate or show the Border Select up front to new users, and skip the Rclick>Select with just mouseover>Select Icon

Maybe also, rename the Border Select to Border Highlight… to make more sense.

Maybe also adding the “Select hierachy” into a button to, which I use a lot (to the point I had to assign an obscure hotkey)

Maybe iconizing the whole outliner Rclick menu and throwing them into the header to skip the Rclick and make the outliner discoverable (like the scene view toolbar or animation panel toggles or toolbars philosophy), or alteast the most used ones or just iconize the panel itself (might be a task already)?

 

:dance:

[Reiner]

Feel free to implement it

[Draise]

Totally would if I could. I guess I could look at what you did with the views button in the 3D view and try implement it into the outliner? First I’ll do the shortcuts before studying….

:dance:

[Reiner]

If it would be this easy then i would’ve long done it. But that it’s something really complicated can be seen at the fact that even the Blender developers didn’t do it yet. Outliner improvements are at the table since years.

It’s not an easy fix, it’s not Python. This is one of the many areas where you need C code. When you want to change something here then you need to go across several c and h files, with mainly uncommented so called self explaining code. Something to go mad about it. That’s why i avoid to touch Blender core functionality where ever possible.

[Author]

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