The Outliner is a hierarchical diagram displaying a list of data in Blender and its dependencies. The SHIFT+F4 'databrowse' doesn't really show it, and 'Oops Schematic' is too chaotic still. And most of all, the former two don't offer much functionality.

 

The work was initiated after discussions with Matt Ebb, who came with this design proposal;

mke3.net/blender/interface/layout/outliner/

Which is closely being followed for the implementation.

 

The Outliner is the new default viewing mode of the "OOPS Schematic" window, renamed to "Outliner" for the 2.35 release. You can still switch to "OOPS Schematic" in the "View" pulldown menu there.

You can also directly enforce an outliner with ALT+SHIFT+F9, without ALT it either shows Outliner or old Oops view, based on what you've set previously.

 

The Outliner tree display (what is open or closed) is saved in .blend files, so it will always come back as you edited it.

 

In this screenshot you can see a visualization of a small scene. The display is hierarchical in two ways;

- It creates subtrees for linked data blocks (e.g. Object->Mesh->Material)

- It creates subtrees for the Object hierarchy

The Object parenting hierarchy is drawn with helper lines, to separate it clearly from data block subtrees.

Outliner GUI

Window header

In the window header you find a menu button with options what the Outliner can show:

  • All Scenes
  • Current Scene
  • Visible Layers (based on current Scene layers)
  • Same Types (all Objects with same type of current active Object)
  • Selected (including active Object)
  • Active (only a single Object)

 

The "View" Pulldown menu has the view options as also mentioned below as hotkeys.

Manipulating the tree

  • Left-mouse click on the triangle arrow to open/close an item.
  • Hold Shift while clicking on a triangle arrow to open/close the subtree below
  • Press ENTER (keyboard) to open a subtree, works on entire item line.
  • Press DOTkey (keyboard or numerical pad) to get the current active data in center of view
  • Press Akey (keyboard) to open/close all
  • Press NumPad plus or minus to show one more or less level
  • Press HOMEkey (keyboard) to show the entire Object hierarchy.

 

Activating and selecting data

Each item is visualized with an icon and its name. When an item is closed, it also draws a summary of its subtree with icons only.

Left-mouse click on any icon and/or the name always activates the associated Object and Scene, and does based on type a couple of extra things:

  • Selects the Object (hold SHIFT to extend selection)
  • Enters EditMode if clicked on Mesh, Curve, Surface, MetaBall, Lattice.
  • Enters PoseMode for Armature
  • Shows the appropriate Shading buttons (Lamp, Material, Texture)
  • Sets the IpoWindow to the current Ipo (animation curves)
  • Activates the Ipo-channel in an Action
  • Activates a Bone in Posemode
  • Activates the Action for NLA Window
  • Selects Vertex Groups
  • Makes TextWindow show the Script

 

Rename

Hold CTRL while clicking on a name allows you to edit a name. This works for all visualized data, including bones or vertex groups, but not for 'nameless' items that draw the links to Hooks, Deform Groups or Constraints.

Outliner showing full Object hierarchy
Outliner showing Armature Bones

TODO

This is still version 1.0 of the Outliner. It can offer much more functionality such as;

  • Rightmouse selection or actions; for indicating operations like delete or copy/paste
  • Showing data per layer, or per data type (like SHIFT+F4)
  • Buttons to enable browsing or creating new data
  • Buttons to change values
  • To be researched; options to indicate Object to become invisible for render, or not selectable in the display.

Features & Gallery

Download

Tutorials & Help

Community

Development

Blender Store