Hello everyone,
For many years, Blender has been my tool of choice for almost all tasks that arise in my daily work as a 3D generalist. Six years ago, I switched from C4D to Blender, and everyday I am amazed at how much this tool can do.
The development of the viewport and now also Geometry Nodes makes it possible to work very quickly and conveniently, and to build an almost endless number of tools that make life easier. The viewport and its controls combined with Cycles is simply the most responsive thing available in DCCs on the market IMO.
In particular, the new gizmos in Geometry Nodes give me hope that one day I will be able to work with tools that come close to the intuitiveness of C4D modifiers and MoGraph.
I have a few suggestions on how Blender can reach the next level of usability and intuitiveness. I think these changes are manageable, and I would like to discuss them here.
First, I don’t exactly understand what the deal is with Collections and Collection Instances. Since collections do not have proper transforms, and visibility cannot be keyframed, the flexibility here is very limited. Without meaning to offend anyone, I think the concept hasn’t been thought through completely, and there is a much simpler and much more felxible solution than the current implementation of Collections.
I think to summarize my idea and wish in one sentence:
Empties / Parents should be the universal groups/collections in Blender!
To understand the idea and the benefits of this, I’ve outlined some points for consideration. Naturally, these points are inspired by C4D, but I think this system is both meaningful and incredibly flexible. I also did some Screenrecordings directly from cinema, so its easier to explain.
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- Ctrl + G could be used as a simple shortcut to parent objects under an empty. The empty would be placed in the position and rotation of the active object.
- Ctrl + G could be used as a simple shortcut to parent objects under an empty. The empty would be placed in the position and rotation of the active object.
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- With Alt + D, an instance could be created from a selected empty without the need to select the empty’s child objects.
- With Alt + D, an instance could be created from a selected empty without the need to select the empty’s child objects.
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- There should be an option to dissolve the instance and release the child objects.
- There should be an option to dissolve the instance and release the child objects.
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- A shortcut (for example Tabulator) to swap the selected instance with the original instance would also be very useful. This would allow the content of the instance to be “teleported” and edited from anywhere in the scene.
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- The parent empty should have the same features like a mesh object, allowing Geometry Nodes modifiers to be applied to all its geometry in the Instance. In this example, imagine, the Twist modifier is just a Geometry nodes Modifier.
- The parent empty should have the same features like a mesh object, allowing Geometry Nodes modifiers to be applied to all its geometry in the Instance. In this example, imagine, the Twist modifier is just a Geometry nodes Modifier.
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- ViewLayers should serve as a keying set for all visibilities and their keyframes. Whether empty or object, every visibility and its keyframe would be stored in the respective ViewLayer, providing almost unlimited flexibility. It would be more or less the functionality, if I just copied the scene and animate Objetcts visibility differently.
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- Visibility overrides should be used to simplify the animation of objects and empty groups. The parent would override the visibility of the children. This saves keyframes, as you wouldn’t need to keyframe 5000 children objects, but just the parent or the empty the objects are in. An additional state, besides True and False, could be used to enforce visibility even if the parent is set to hidden.
- Visibility overrides should be used to simplify the animation of objects and empty groups. The parent would override the visibility of the children. This saves keyframes, as you wouldn’t need to keyframe 5000 children objects, but just the parent or the empty the objects are in. An additional state, besides True and False, could be used to enforce visibility even if the parent is set to hidden.
Right-Click Select — Blender Community
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- The collection color should be applicable to empties and objects. An option for an unlimited number of colors would make sense. A new Layer window where these colors act as tags/layers could be useful to quickly toggle visibility or even activate/deactivate modifiers. These colors can then be named to provide better organization. For those hwo think this is a complicated approach and interface. Image you can just animate both Render and Viewport visibillity with one click.
- The collection color should be applicable to empties and objects. An option for an unlimited number of colors would make sense. A new Layer window where these colors act as tags/layers could be useful to quickly toggle visibility or even activate/deactivate modifiers. These colors can then be named to provide better organization. For those hwo think this is a complicated approach and interface. Image you can just animate both Render and Viewport visibillity with one click.
As we can see the ideas come actually mostly from C4D but are very intuitive and would greatly benefit Blender especially in product shots and generally motion graphics, where many different states of a scene need to be keyframed. So far, I use Shot Manager to save the ViewLayer states of my scene, but unfortunately, collection visibility cannot be keyframed, which quickly limits flexibility.
I’m not sure how much effort these implementations would require, but they would greatly simplify Blender and provide much greater flexibility with Geometry Nodes. Collections, Groups, Group instances, and Collection instances would be replaced by the ability to instance every object/empty in the scene and, therefore, their children.
In other words, every instanced parent/empty can be seen as a group in the node trees. It can be instanced anywhere and essentially replaces the collection. The difference is that it is as flexible as a mesh and can have its own gizmo, animatable visibility, and modifiers. Additionally, with the colored tags, a very high level of flexibility and organization can be ensured. The ViewLayers serve as a kind of take system to easily plan multiple variants of a scene or different layers for compositing.
It’s difficult to post this as a comprehensive topic on Right-Click Select, so I see it more as a discussion thread. I would be interested to know if you guys see any advantages in this approach.
Thanks for reading
Cheers Daniel
