Hello everybody I just want to share with all of you my “idea?”, what about implementing a layer manager inside the outliner?, I’m thinking on something like this:
Of course tabs titles could be changed is just an idea, please tell me what do you think…:yes:
I think this is a good idea. In fact, I’ve been thinking about what would be the best place for a layer manager, since the infamous “header layers” quickly show their limits and lots of people have been requesting a real layer manager for some time now. It’s a clever usage of tabs.
we need some real layers outliner and layer system together would be a great idea!
good,outliner good place for layer manager.
look at outliner in Softimage. This is best outliner of all 3d packages. Will be great to see some functions of it in Blender
Agree, softimage explorer is great.
As I mentioned in others place, outliner and layer must be fused.
A small addition to the Outliner, Object > Animation > Action
shows only the current Action, which you can see in the dope sheet, what would be nice is if under Animation if you expand it, it shows all Action sets for an Object.
Blender got some critic reg. seeing action sets in Valve mod wiki. Still the documentation for using blender when modding is extensive and well done!
I think it could help when doing Action sets for the BGE also. To have a complete list somewhere of actions.
Dang, that looks very clunky and cumbersome. Have you guys bothered to check the API? Layers are just a bunch of boolean True/False settings. We only have 20 because the API was never updated.
I think what we have is fine and efficient. Come on, how many of you guys actually name your layers in Photoshop or Illustrator anyway?
This was (sort of) proposed in the past (outliner tabs) :
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Proposals/UI/Mode_sensitive_outliner
it is similar to modo’s outliner
The outliner can be extended to be much more useful.
And it makes more sense to have them in the outliner than any other random location (such as a tab in the T-toolbar or the N-panel or even worse- the properties editor). I wouldnt object having them anywhere of course. Any improvements on the layers editor is very welcome. Naming layers would be useful. Locking them would be too!
ron43> can you elaborate on that? What makes the softimage outliner so great? What are your favorite features in it?
Autodesk just killed softimage and left many people pissed off. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for blender to steal some of their loyal users- get them to try blender out. 
Atom> naming layers helps if more than one person works on a scene file. Also note that currently you can not lock them, so in order to not select stuff- you have to either hide it or lock it through the outliner. You can not lock all the objects on a layer as far as I know. Maybe there is a way?
It depends on who you are working with. I work in Engineering I almost want to kiss an architecture who names his layers and sets things by layer in AutoCAD, the mofo who doesn’t him I want to burn on a stake. so yay naming layers is very important in my book especially if you are working with other people
So long as it remains very easy and quick to switch layers, move objects to different layers (ie M+alt+2) and display different layers in different windows.
Blender user’s scenes are messy, we just need to look at the blendswap scenes to see that the outliner is messy with 3000 meshs and no groups, no emptys as groups, just meshes named sphere, cube etc.
No way you can use these scenes right now, so a better outliner with better layers will be great.
I wondering if it is possible to make this kind of page https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ScPMbHv8WRCU2znB7IU2l-W9hH-NLs5weQKLkjqmgpA/edit# and work togheter to improve the outliner and then make a proposal like dev’s do.
I know everyone can make a proposal on the dev’s site, but if it’s already well thinked, maybe it will be approuved by dev’s and then implemented more easily than if they do all the work like on the tabs menu.
Sorry for my english !
Well I surely do !
Blender’s outliner and layer management isn’t up to par with the rest of the package.
A little example that bothers me (maybe someone knows a way to do that):
You have a hierarchy of parents/children. I would like to be able, in the outliner, to hide/unhide visibility/renderability and selectability for a parent and its descendants in one click.
I think the outliner is pretty basic as it is now…
I don’t think anyone (except apparently Atom) will argue that Blenders layer and outliner systems are two of the weakest points of the package. The question is, who will put the time in to fix it?
I like it - I also think that the strength in using the outliner to handle the layers is the ability to have more than the default and be more flexible like the aforementioned Photoshop… with the new projects centered around organizational tools and collaboration tools, this sounds like something that could be a target soon ( I hope ).
edit: About naming layers - yes, I do in both Photoshop and Illustrator, as well as other 2d editors I use. I even name the texture layers I use in Blender material as if they are PS layers 
I do 
It’s very useful to be organized with names, specially for big productions.
Well, we don’t have to remove the old layers we can just change their name to something like “quick layers” and the “complete” package will be on the Outliner…(and yes I do name my layers in PS)
We will of course need to mock up the render layer panel for using these layers by name or number instead of just the normal 3 sets of 20 check boxes…
… or at least give colors to ‘layer boxes’ and an option to show ‘color by layer’ viewport (wire, shade) and outliner.
Quick color layers would be amazing for starters.
I added a Layer Manager proposal section to the doc. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ScPMbHv8WRCU2znB7IU2l-W9hH-NLs5weQKLkjqmgpA/edit#heading=h.6l0u8qu9vfpj
Which, by the way, was already on the proposals wiki.