Use entire scenes as blender layers instead of the restricted 20. You can have as many layers as you want and there is a basic form of layer parenting, allowing for branched layering systems.
Could contain some bugs, beware.
Layer parenting, layers inherit visibility from parent layers
Layer locking, disables selection of objects in layers/scenes
Move items from layers to layers
_Unsorted backup scene. Failsafe so that no object created in _Viewport accidentally gets lost.
How it works:
Every scene marked as a ‘SCENELAYER’ is added as a layer. All objects in these scenes are combined/linked in the _Viewport scene.
Initialise:
Once you’ve loaded the plugin, go to the scenes tab in properties, scroll down to find ‘Layer Scene Options’.
Press the Init button. Scenelayers then prepares your blend file to work with …scene layers.
Note: Avoid having a scene called _Viewport and _Unsorted when initting. Unless they were created by Scenelayers in the first place.
_Viewport and _Unsorted:
Scenelayers draws all layers into the _Viewport layer (which you can work in if you want ), but what happens to objects created in the _Viewport layer? They are added to the _Unsorted layer to serve as a backup.
Interface:
Main Scene / Viewport layer name. You can change this, but I advise against it.
Name of a new layer , create layer button to the right
Name of parent layer ( be carefull with this for now )
Force _Viewport update ( usefull )
IMPORTANT: Deleting items: Since items are LINKED to the _viewport, and viewport items that are unlinked are automatically added to the _Unsorted layer, I urge you to use SHIFT+X to delete objects. SHIFT+X removes all links to the object and thus prevents it from appearing again.
BE CAREFULL WITH LAYER PARENTING FOR THE TIME BEING
I’m using this script myself, so I’m expecting to be expanding and improving this script over the course of time.
This is basically the first working version that has enough functionality for me to share with others. I hope you all try it out and give me some feedback on how it worked for you, and what you would like to see added, or changed, any bugs or other things that I may have missed
CHANGELOG:
V0_5:
Improved Segmentation of UI to better reflect parents and child layers Added: Active Layer, Objects created in viewport are now moved to the active layer,
instead of the default _Unsorted layer.
Thanks for the positive feedback, I appreciate it
Now should you encounter any errors or things that you find strange, don’t hesitate and post it here ( I’m subscribed to this thread , so I get an update every week)
Hello, I appreciate this effort, but i want to comment:
blenders layer system is outdated, if we don’t want to use any wrong words here.
there are about 10 addons like this. some use in background blender layers, but with names, some use hide-show and some lists, and you use scenes.
all these solutions are clever, but, they are addons. They come, and they go. Nobody has the nerves to keep an addon maintained with the updates of the main branch of blander, if the addon isn’t in the git repository. And what happens if you open the file in another version where the addon isn’t enabled? how can you share such file? It’s really a hard job.
so, thanks for this addon, you did a great job but my opinion still is
that what users should do is to push harder to blender foundation, to implement proper layers as core functionality.
Thanks for the feedback so far. Now I understand your concern pildanovak, plugins come and go, mine will hopefully become obscelete by blender 2.8. But untill that time, people will keep on making these, and it’s just a matter of sharing your own version of a layer manager with others for a few reasons like:
Improving my understand of blender internally
Improving my understanding of- and proficiency in python
Learning to build good and intuitive UI’s that others enjoy using
As for stability, I’ve tried using the blender core as much as I can. So others without the plugin will be able to work with the files. The only thing they’ll miss is the automatic layer merging and updates and management that scenelayers provides.
I’ve uploaded a small update with a few tweaks:
Improved Segmentation of UI to better reflect parents and child layers
Added: Active Layer, Objects created in viewport are now moved to the active layer, instead of the default _Unsorted layer.
Thanks for this add-on which I think is already very productive, it would be perfect
(if possible)
if you have potessereo on or off for each layer independent scene
EX
viewport on the global scene 1
Layer on 1 scene 2
3 scen layer layer 3 on 1 off
thanks again;-)
This is fantastic (You have no idea how useful this is). Blender keeps on getting better, not just in itself, but people like you are able to put apparently simple but very effective addons, that really save time and this makes our work better too! (Less time wressling with limited un named layers = more time creating!) This should definitely be shipped inside blender, its a no-brainer!
I’m not quite sure what you mean by that ignoenius but I think that this is what you mean:
First, for the sake of terminology, let’s say that there are layers and layerscenes.
Layers: blender’s default 20 layers.
Scenelayers: scenes , used as layers in the viewport.
Am I correct in assuming that you mean that you want to also be able to show specific blender layers of specific scenelayers?
Like say that you only want to show blenderlayer 5 of scenelayer X in the viewport?
