Collections inside collections bug

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hey guys.
I have an issue with inconsistent behavior and not working options of Collections that are placed inside Collections when trying to enable / disable them from View Layers.

The main thing I would want to do is:
when I have a complicated structure of collections, and I disable a bunch of collections from view layer, then I want to include all of them back again like you would with visibility for example, by holding Shift and clicking on an icon next to the collection name that contains all the other collections.

I reported this as a bug but maybe someone can explain how this is a correct behavior.

Exact steps for others to reproduce the error

Collections Bug / Inconsistency:

  1. I create a collection “Collection_Cubes”
  2. Inside “Collection_Cubes” I create “Collection_Cubes_A” and “Collection_Cubes_B”
  3. I exclude “Collection_Cubes_A” from ViewLayer
  4. I hold Shift and click checkbox to exclude “Collection_Cubes” and everything inside from ViewLayer
  5. I hold Shift and click checkbox to include “Collection_Cubes” and everything inside in ViewLayer

Result:
“Collection_Cubes_A” does not get included in ViewLayer

Expected result:
“Collection_Cubes_A” should get included in ViewLayer.
Holding shift works for all the other options: “Disable Selections”, “Disable in Viewport”, “Disable in Renders”, “Holdout”, “Indirect only”

Furthermore:

So now I have:

  • Collestion_Cubes ENABLED
    • Collection_Cubes_A DISABLED
    • Collection_Cubes_B ENABLED
  1. I disable the “Collection_Cubes”
  2. I select and right click “Collection_Cubes_B”, and go to “View Layer / Enable in View Layer”

Result: The collection gets enabled as expected.

  1. I select and right click “Collection_Cubes_A”, and go to “View Layer / Enable in View Layer”

Result: The collection does not get enabled.
Expected result: “Collection_Cubes_A” should get enabled in ViewLayer

Note: the same happens when shortcuts “E” and “Alt+E” are used.

In the shared file you can try to:

  • enable “Collection_Cubes_A” by pressing Alt+E or going to “View Layer / Enable in View Layer” and it will not work.
  • if you try to disable and enable “Collection_Cubes_B” by pressing E, Alt+E or going to “View Layer / Enable in View Layer” it will not work.

Collections_Bug.blend (805.5 KB)

2

If anybody else has an issue with this the solution would be to use an extensions called:
Collection Manager

It’s behavior is more predictable regarding the collections include/exclude option.