Outliner 2.0 - Scene management tool for 3ds Max

SyncViewS · Apr 2010

Hi guys, after months of development Pier Janssen released his Outliner 2.0 for free (donations are welcome, of course).

"The Outliner 2.0 is a fast and easy to use scene management tool. It has a wide range of features, including selecting, hiding, freezing, linking and grouping objects in the "Hierarchy Mode". In the "Layer Mode" you can organize your scene by dragging&dropping objects from one layer to the other. What's more, the Outliner offers support for nested layers, to manage scenes more efficiently. The interface is nimble enough to keep it open constantly."

Get it here and take a look at its features in this video.

Bal · Apr 2010

Cool, I had some stability issues with the last one, which required me to stop using it, but it was quite good (I miss my Maya outliner T___T).
Gonna give this one a try, thanks for the heads up.

Noors · Apr 2010

yay nested layers \o/
looking good :]

PredatorGSR · Apr 2010

Awesome, I use this every day.

MoP · Apr 2010

Awesome, love the Outliner. Everyone should have this. Pier Jansson is a hero!

Michael Knubben · Apr 2010

I was looking at this yesterday, and it's amazing! How's the stability on this?

r_fletch_r · Apr 2010

Nested layers!!!

Michael Knubben · Apr 2010

Hmm, won't install for me. Textools uses an mzp too, and that works fine, but this complains about not having access to a directory. The problem being, if I run Max as administrator (under win7) I can't drag the mzp into the viewport.

LiselottePulva · Apr 2010

great update - the size of the window are now smaler !
@mightypea: use "run script"

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Thanks for the kind words guys

And thanks to SyncViewS for the referral

@MightyPea: Liselotte is right, starting it through the main menu, MaxScript -> Run Script should do the trick.
I am interested in what exactly went wrong when trying to install without administrator rights. Do you get an error message, or maybe a crash? And is there anything in the maxscript listener? Hopefully it's something I can fix.

Considering stability: 2.0 is not only much faster, but also definitely more stable. For example, the annoying "startup" crash that some of you may have experienced in previous versions has finally been fixed.
What's more, if you do encounter an error in 2.0, instead of an ugly crash, you'll get an error report dialog. Using this you can easily send an error report to me, so I can investigate and hopefully fix the issue quickly.

PolyHertz · Apr 2010

Just fyi, Outliner doesn't play nice with Illusion Catalyst, their docking features interfere with each other.

michi.be · Apr 2010

I docked it on the left. Can I make the window a little bit tighter? It's very broad and it seems I cant resize it.

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

@PolyHertz: Hm that's not cool. The docking in 3dsmax for scripts is rather buggy, there's nothing I can do about it unfortunately.
@michi.be: Again, a docking bug in 3dsmax. The only way you can resize it is by undocking, resizing, and redocking...

michi.be · Apr 2010

thanks Pjanssen. Sorry if you have to tell people over and over again but I had no time reading whole threads.
I really like your tool and it replaced the common browser instantly.

SyncViewS · Apr 2010

Well, no docking plug-in play nice with others, as they get stacked one over each other and not on relative side. I mean you can't have IC.Shape docked on left of the screen and on IC.Shape's right side anything else docked. This depends on how 3ds Max handles docking with its "iFrames". You can just dock IC.Shape on one side of the screen and Outliner on the other one. Or just keep them floating

@ Pjanssen: I'm glad to advertise good hard work when I spot it. Yours definitely fits!

MaD · Apr 2010

This is just what i needed, thanks a lot.

Mark Dygert · Apr 2010

So nice to have this updated for max, it seems to handle bigger scenes better. Love it.

Spatz · Apr 2010

great! ..thanks for updating outliner for max...

PolyHertz · Apr 2010

SyncViewS wrote: »

You can just dock IC.Shape on one side of the screen and Outliner on the other one. Or just keep them floating

Yep, that's exactly what I ended up doing: outliner on left, ic on right

I tried outliner once before some time ago, was too glitchy back then to use, but seems much better now after a bit of messing around. Thanks Pier :thumbup:

SHEPEIRO · Apr 2010

nice gonna check this out tommorow

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

PolyHertz wrote: »

I tried outliner once before some time ago, was too glitchy back then to use, but seems much better now after a bit of messing around. Thanks Pier :thumbup:

Cheers

Could you maybe check what exactly was going wrong when trying to install the outliner without administrator rights? I'd be very interested in the error messages printed to the maxscript listener for example.
I only have access to windows xp, and that isn't quite as restrictive. It'd help a lot in improving the installer for future updates.

Michael Knubben · Apr 2010

"Copying new files failed.

Please see the Maxscript Listener (F11) for details."

Then in the listener:
"Installer exception:
copyScriptFiles
-- Runtime error: dotNet runtime exception: Access to the path 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Autodesk\3ds Max 2010\scripts\outliner\' is denied."

Running the script through the menu worked when I ran Max with admin priviliges

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Hmm yeah there isn't much I can do about that...
I'll add a hint to the error message telling people to make sure they have administrator rights.

renderhjs · Apr 2010

Pjanssen: Use the userScripts folder instead of the scripts folder. you can access that folder in Maxscript using:

pathConfig.GetDir #userScripts

it behaves the same as the scripts folder but was added after Microsoft asked devs to avoid admin privileges and use the user folders for that kind of stuff.
There are other user folders also available such as userIcons if you need to access custom icon files. The maxscript reference should give you more details.

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Hm that's a very good idea. I'll check that out. Thanks.
Will the usericons directory work for icons used by macroscripts too? I had some problems when trying to put those under anything else than [max root]/ui/Icons/. Even a subdir of that broke it.

edit: yes it does work.

I'll use the user dirs for the next update. Thanks for the tip!
edit2: slightly annoying thing I just realised: uninstalling the previous version will still require admin rights...

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Following the suggestion from renderhjs, I've updated the installer (v2.0.3). All script files are now copied to the userscript folders, so you will no longer need admin rights to install the Outliner.
Uninstalling versions prior to 2.0.3 will still require administrator rights, but after this is done, it should no longer be a problem.

Use the link in this post on cgtalk to download the latest version. Users who have already installed 2.0.2 can wait until the next version is released.

PredatorGSR · Apr 2010

This is super nitpicky, but installing the new version resets all the preferences. It took like 30 seconds to change back, but it makes upgrading have a negative effect, which is probably not good in terms of user expectations. I don't if this is a technical requirement because of version incompatibility, but it would be nice if it kept the settings. I installed by dragging the file into the window, if it makes a difference.

Otherwise, awesome update.

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Ah yep you're absolutely right. That is to say, you were right. The 2.0.3 installer should not remove preferences anymore. As you say, this was initially done to avoid issues with 1.61 preferences, but it was implemented in a rather clunky way. Should be fixed now.
Let me know if you have a different experience though!

Yozora · Apr 2010

ahh I love outliner, nested layers and the ability to click hide/show layers/objects = awesome

Thanks for the update post, probably wouldn't of found out about it if someone didnt post about it here

mLichy · Apr 2010

Awesome man... I gotta show ppl at work.

Also, thanks for bring up the UserScripts stuff. I was going to setup my MZP to do that, then decided not to, but now I switched it to UserScripts/Macros/Icons.

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Yozora wrote: »

Thanks for the update post, probably wouldn't of found out about it if someone didnt post about it here

Cheers

If you have ideas on how to further promote the Outliner to reach more 3dsmax users, I'd be interested to hear them.

Synthesizer · Apr 2010

I'm having to use Max at work again.... Nice to see this updated! I'll probably be able to break it and give you a huge list of bugs

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Synthesizer wrote: »

I'm having to use Max at work again.... Nice to see this updated! I'll probably be able to break it and give you a huge list of bugs

Oh no it's my nemesis the 3dsmax tool destroyer!

I hope you'll like the update mate

Michael Knubben · Apr 2010

I take it the width when docked isn't adjustable? I'm assuming this is a limitation of max's docking, but just asking in case I'm wrong.

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Yes this is a 3dsmax limitation. The only thing you can do is to undock it, resize, then redock.
In 3dsmax 2011 it's become even worse: the height doesn't auto-adjust anymore either...

Andrew_Morris · Apr 2010

This is a great tool! Thanks for updating it, makes managing big scenes much easier.

A few things I know I would find useful:

-being able to see just what you have unhidden in the hierarchy view instead of the entire scene contents. Similar to the 3dsMax Selection Floater.

-an option to have the search function only search through what is unhidden (perhaps through a filter?)

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

The filters should do what you describe here. Right-click on the filter button, to bring up the filter options dialog. Un-check the left-topmost button (hidden objects). Enable the filter by left-clicking the filter button in the main UI.

Shogun3d · Apr 2010

Great stuff, this is very useful!

Andrew_Morris · Apr 2010

Pjanssen wrote: »

The filters should do what you describe here. Right-click on the filter button, to bring up the filter options dialog. Un-check the left-topmost button (hidden objects). Enable the filter by left-clicking the filter button in the main UI.

I tried this initially, but it doesn't seem to work for me. Tried checking and unchecking Filter affects viewports as well.

The other filters work, but hidden doesn't seem to.

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Aha, I'll look into it.
edit: it works fine for me with one exception: it does not take the layers hidden state into account. So the hidden flag on the node is the only thing it looks at. Could this be what was causing your problem?

Andrew_Morris · Apr 2010

Yep that was it, was hiding layers and expecting their objects to be hidden as well

.

Would be nice if it paid attention to that when filtering (or have it as a separate option). But if not its still a very handy utility.

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Andrew_Morris wrote: »

Would be nice if it paid attention to that when filtering (or have it as a separate option). But if not its still a very handy utility.

I'll do my best to fix this. There are a couple more things not going entirely right with the node + layer hidden/frozen states..

IxenonI · Apr 2010

this is great, thank you!

SimonT · Apr 2010

Great Tool, you should write down, that you can set shortcuts manually via Customize > Cust. User Interface > "Open/Close Outliner"

for all people won't set it to "H" by the install routine.

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Thank you Simon, that is a good idea indeed. I'll add it.

I've been working on the next update this week, 2.0.4, mostly to fix bugs reported by users. Almost all of which will be fixed, included a frequently reported issue with undo/redo crashing the Outliner.

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

I've uploaded the new update: 2.0.4.
The latest version can be downloaded here, or if you have the Outliner installed already, use the "Check now" button in the Options dialog.

Outliner version 2.0.4
* Layer properties set through the Outliner are now all propagated to child layers.
* Added option to put main UI buttons at the top of the Outliner window. (by request).
* Search textfield now filters the nodes in the treeview when typing and only selects them when pressing enter.
* Filter now takes an objects layer hidden/frozen state into account too. (If you're filtering out hidden nodes, and the layer of the object is hidden, the object node will not be shown).
* Added "Filter affects layers" option. When enabled, hidden layers will be affected too when filtering hidden or frozen nodes, disabled by default.
* Moved "Filter affects viewport" option from the Options dialog to the Filter dialog for easier access.
* Fixed "Filter affects viewport" not updating properly when enabling/disabling filter or the option itself.
* Fixed crash when using undo either with the Outliner open or before opening it.
* Fixed material rename crash when Outliner is closed.
* Fixed crash when deleting nodes (occured under rare circumstances)
* Fixed crash when hiding one or more nodes in the Outliner while filtering hidden nodes.
* Fixed incorrect node state after invalid link operation (when trying to create a dependency loop).
* Macroscripts are no longer copied to the usermacros directly, to avoid duplicate files.

Workflow Tools 2.0.4
* Macroscripts are no longer copied to the usermacros directly, to avoid duplicate files.
* Added Hide Selected Layers Toggle & Freeze Selected Layers Toggle
* Added Add Selection to new Layer
* Added Delete Empty Layers

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

I've uploaded update 2.0.5.
You can get it by using the "Check now" button in the options dialog, or alternatively, download it directly. If you update through the Outliner, it'll show that the latest version is 3.0, this is wrong and is merely to solve an issue with the updates.

The changes in 2.0.5:
* Fixed drag&drop unlink/ungroup crash
* Fixed crash when Outliner tries to access a deleted layer (occurs when opening or creating a scene)
* Added hide/freeze buttons for nodes (either before or after the node, or aligned to the right of the Outliner, can be turned off).
* Added an option to choose what should happen when a node's icon is clicked
* Filtered out nodes that are still in the tree because they have visible childnodes are greyed out.
* Object conversions (e.g. Spline to Editable Poly) are reflected in Outliner. (3dsmax2009+)
* Various minor fixes.

Mark Dygert · Apr 2010

Awesome thanks for the updates. I really like the "check for updates" that's pretty slick, thanks for making it painless.

Oh and by the way, this kicks so much ass I can't begin to tell you how thankful I am for this script and its updates.

Andrew_Morris · Apr 2010

I second that, this thing is amazing. Makes managing my scenes sooo much easier.

BradMyers82 · Apr 2010

Where has this been all my life?

This is a really awesome tool. I never used Outliner 1.0, but so far I'm loving this tool. Thanks a lot man!

Pjanssen · Apr 2010

Thanks guys!

I've just uploaded a new update, which fixes a pretty serious issue when using the "convert object to" functionality after having had the Outliner open.
So please update to 2.0.6. You can get it by using the "Check now" button in the options dialog, or alternatively, download it directly.

Outliner 2.0 - Scene management tool for 3ds Max

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