Blender 2.81 Outliner: are they still working on it?

I hope they’re not done yet and they’re improving things.
Try this.
Create two separate meshes for sculpting. I have a subdivided cube and a round cube.
Switch to the sculpting tab.
Start sculpting on the last selected object, in my case the round cube.
Now select the cube in the outliner.
You’ll notice you’re not sculpting the cube, whereas you can still sculpt on the round cube.

In other words, the selection that happens in the outliner doesn’t reflect the selections in the viewport.

I think this is just like in edit mode. If you click on another object in edit mode you only select it but it does not turn active.
Bug or feature. I don’ t know.

By default, there is a lock that don’t allow you to switch mode by switching selection using outliner.
You can disable it in Topbar Edit menu. Edit > Lock Object modes.

Multi-object editing feature also does not support Sculpt mode, yet.

In 2.8, when you switch to a tab, multi-object editing is switching all selection to workspace mode.
That does not work with sculpt mode that has to be limited to one object.

So, anyways, when you switch to Sculpting Tab, only one object is under sculpt mode.

First, disable Lock Object Modes.
Then, go to sculpting tab. Active object will be in sculpt mode.
Now, without the lock, you can select the second object from outliner and switch to object mode.
Set this object to sculpt mode.
Now, you can reselect first object via outliner : it will be in sculpt mode.
Reselect the second : it will be in sculpt mode.
… etc

The only thing that is not possible currently is to sculpt on multiple objects during the same brush stroke.

3 Likes

Thank you @zeauro!

That finally shed some light on this mystery.
I only wonder what’s the Lock Object feature for?
I can’t think of a situation where it can be useful :confused:

That could be Blender’s tagline. I jest with much love towards the software, but sometimes I end up thinking the same thing about may parts of Blender. Is this something missed or was someone smoking some good stuff.

Multi-object editing is a new concept. As an experimental feature, it could produce lots of crashes into alpha and betas.
Lock was added to avoid those ones.
2.80 and 2.81 are recent. It is not obvious that multi-object editing workflow is explicit and really tested.
So, it is too soon to remove the lock.