Reply To: Assetization

This is mainly left over from before the 2.80 redesign of the user interface back when we had layer and groups. The groups where used primarily for linking assets. 

The 3 ways that I’ve used it for is selection control and collection instancing. So by it not being linked to the scene it keeps the outliner clean. 

1. Selection control lets me select an object then shift+g->collection->then select collection to select everything in that collection. Since I only use those for selecting I don’t need those collection listed in the outliner. 

2. For instancing: I will unlink the original collection so that people won’t accidently select the object and transform them, because then it transforms that object for all the instances. Side note: Yes you could just disable that collection in view layer(The check box in the outliner next to the collection name.), but Sometimes people check it, because it was there. When you’re working by yourself you usually won’t have that problem. 

3. This is pretty niche. So if you want to skip this then skip it. On the n-panel under the view tab there is a collections panel. You can show and hide collections thru this panel. I use the Local Collections. Local collections when checked only hide/show(Eye icon) collections in that 3D Viewport and doesn’t change the show/hide setting of collections in the outliner. You can also have different collections hidden/showing in different 3D Viewports. Which is handy in some animation situations. Like a control panel for a rig that doesn’t follow the Root or a sub Root bone. This panel only shows collections that are Linked to the scene and enabled for that view layer. I only recently learned that I could just disable it in the view layer. Also for the hotkeys people like me you can access this thru the numbers at the top of the keyboard. 1-9 and 0 are the first 10 collection(this isolates the collection) Use shift with the number to toggle show/hide. Then use Alt with the numbers for collection 11 thru 20. Again to toggle use shift+Alt+ the number. for 21+ you will need to go thru the panel or the outliner.