I would like to act on hidden objects

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hello blenders

Is there a way to act on hidden objects?
I want to parent, edit or copy without unhiding them.
That would be very usefull and time saving. I don’t understand why it is not possible, it seems to me a basic feature for a good 3D software. So far I cant find preferences options for that.

Also I would like when hiding\unhiding a collection to prevent the reset all the hidden objects inside it, this is infuriating!

are there options or plugins to fix this?

I can’t adress all the interface issues I find in Blender here, but I must say I am getting less and less enthousiastic about it after working full time on heavy scenes. A lot of my time and energy is lost because of that poor workflow.

First I was putting it on habits from previous softwares (Softimage mostly), and that I needed to embrace Blender’s logic and architecture. But not being able to work on hidden objects is a non-sense limitation if true. Why do this? Why reset objects visiblity when unhidding collections? It is like blowing the scene for no reason…

1 Like
2

Hi,

As for your first question see here:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/158569/is-there-a-way-to-move-scale-and-duplicate-hidden-objects-with-the-gizmo

As for your second question, I didn’t get it. What do you mean by saying hiding/unhiding collection?

3

collections have an On/Off button
if you use it it will reset all hide properties of all objects inside and set them to visible.

4

You mean these icons?

image

1 Like
5

You can parent and copy any object in the Outliner.

But hiding a Collection should not reset the visibility of objects inside, unless you hold Shift? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

6

I mean the white check box left of it

7

It’s not a “Hide” option though

8

Not if the object is hidden, hence my question.

You can’t parent it from the outliner nor duplicate, but edit its modifiers.

In the view port you can’t do anything on a selected hidden object. Working on hidden object is an essential part of a good and efficient workflow.

Right now it feels like Blender is stuck on “noob security mode”.

9

whatever, it resets the visibilty, but not the renderability that remains unchanged. This is utterly stupid and a waste of time.

10

Gotcha

Seems to me that’s just the way how Blender works though. I’m not gonna say that it can’t be prevented anyway, maybe via Python or something like this, but I don’t think there’s some option in the User preferences when you can like “disable” it by clicking LMB.

Here’s what I just found about this, maybe not the exact same thing, but a bit closer to what you’re looking for:

11

I mean, it is not a thing from nature or a godly creation, someone wrote that code. This feature of offloading collections is usefull when dealing with heavy scene and building layers. But this reset is ruining it.

1 Like
12

I understand what you’re mean anyway. What I wanna say is that I’m not sure whether it’s can be fixed or not.

13

From the second link you post, this issue is simply being ignored and conversation is closed :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

14

Yeah, kinda. Maybe they thought that that option wouldn’t be so demanded, idk.

15

So hidden objects can receive modifiers and they can be edited when selected.

They can be transformed too from the transform panel, but in “blind mode” without any gizmo display in the viewport. No duplicate, no parenting is possible, but moving in a collection is.

I hardly make sense of these particular cases. There is no consistency in this.

16

Again, it is possible. In the Outliner.

17

please explain

18

You can use Copy and Paste.
You can drag and drop object(s) to Parent to another (hint says: “Shift to Parent”).

1 Like
19

God, I was using shift+D to duplicate

and ctrl+p to parent. I was ignoring shift+drag. So you can parent in the outliner, but not unparent?

The shortcuts are different from outliner and viewport? what madness is that?

20

Go join Right Click Select and add your needs to the list.

Make a sensible, detailed request with images if it helps…

Watch this new video.

I have no idea if you are animating or not, but the base concept, of splitting up parts of blender for a fairly major re-arrangement is a good time to be adding your needs. Your idea is useful, and Blender has already adapted a lot from other apps… “Industry Standard” being a major influence.

There you may get a change, here you just ‘blow off steam’.

2D V’s 3D…