in this video we're going to explain collections in blender
to do that. We're going to try and separate are seen into two groups.
One for characters and one for background objects.
Collections are similar to what you might call layers or groups in other software.
Each collection in your scene can hold objects of any
kind for the purposes of organization and or rendering.
You can also have collections within collections for further organization.
In fact that's what's already being done as the scene collection
acts as the parent collection for all collections in a scene.
As you can see here.
Now to start us off let's make a scene that makes sense for our purposes.
What we want to do is separate are
seen into character objects and background objects.
I'm going to go ahead and scale this cube up until we're inside of it.
This will be our environment or background.
Then I'm going to add a new object monkey.
This monkey also known as Suzanne will act as our character.
If you take a look at the outline er you can see that our monkey has
already been added to our existing collection whenever
you add objects in the three D.
View ports keep in mind that they will be added
to whatever collection you have selected at the time.
In case you can't see any objects in your outline. Er
Your collection maybe collapsed down to a single line.
This is done by clicking this arrow on the left of the collection name.
Simply click this arrow again
to expand it
for hot key users. You can press the plus and minus keys on the number pad.
So let's try and move our character into a character collection.
Well for that there are a few ways to do it.
But one of the quickest ways is to simply select
the object and right click for a context menu.
Under this menu, you'll see the move to collection option.
If you click that you'll be presented with a few choices.
If we choose seeing collection,
this will bring our monkey out of its current collection.
This is not what we want.
And the only existing collection we see in this
list is the one the monkey is already in
what we want is the new collection option.
So let's go ahead and click that and name our new collection character.
Quick tip to confirm the name. After typing simply hit enter twice.
Now if you look at our outline er you can
see that our monkey is in our character collection.
For hockey users,
you can press m as in move to bring the same move
to collection menu for whatever object or objects you have selected.
Another way you can add an object to a
new collection is to create an empty collection.
First
to do this simply right click any empty space in the outline er and click new.
This will create a new collection within the scene collection.
If instead of empty space, you right click a collection name
it will create a new collection within the collection. You right clicked
for hot key users.
You can simply hover over the outline er and press
C to create a new collection in the same collection.
And if you happen to have a collection already selected
your new collection will appear under the selected collection.
Fun fact you can create as many collections as you like.
You can rename collections at any time by double
clicking or control clicking their names in the outline.
Er
So let's go ahead and rename our new collection as BG or background.
We can then move our cube which
is our background object to our background collection
in the view port with the same move to collection menu or the M.
Hockey and then selecting the now existing background collection
from the menu.
Or we can use the outline er And simply
left click drag the object to the background collection.
Now that we have our character object
and background objects in their respective collections.
You can check and uncheck each collection to toggle their visibility.
This will turn them off during render as well. For the view layer you have selected
to quickly show you how view layers work with collections?
I will create a new view layer up here
as you can see the checked or unchecked state
of each collection is unique to each view layer.
But what about our light and camera objects?
Let's say we want to have these objects in both the background and
character collections so that they are visible whenever we isolate either one.
However, when we try to move our objects to more than one collection,
it doesn't work
while it is possible to link objects to more
than one collection Using the shift em hotkey.
A preferable way is to use collections within collections.
Let's take a look at how that might work.
First thing I'm going to do is rename our collection to car slash BG
car being short for character.
If we were to simply drag the character
and BG collections into our car slash BG collection
we can now toggle all collections within our
car slash BG collection off or on with one
check mark but also keep the light and camera objects on while toggle in the other two
functionally.
This achieves the same thing as adding the light
and camera objects to both character and background collections.
As you can keep the main collection enabled while
toggle off the sub collections you don't want to include
if you do happen to use shift em to link objects to multiple collections. However,
it becomes a bit harder to keep track of
as there will be duplicates in your outline
er even though they represent the same object.
However, if you do link an object to multiple collections like this,
just know that you can remove the object from a collection
by right clicking it in the outline er and selecting unlinked.
Now that we have all of our objects in their proper collections.
I want to explain a quick tip for when collapsing and expanding your collections
in case you're out liner ever gets too busy
collapsing your collections can be very helpful.
What's especially great is you'll notice a few icons next to the collection names.
These icons represent what type of objects exist within each collection.
For example
right now our character collection has only one object
but if you collapse the car slash BG collection
you'll see that it contains two collections
to meshes one light
and one camera.
This is very helpful for seeing at a glance what objects
are within each collection in case you need a reminder.
Now let's say for whatever reason I want to delete this car slash BG collection.
Deleting a collection does not delete the objects within the collection.
For example,
if we select the car slash BG collection in our outline er and hit the delete key.
The collection is deleted but the objects within
the collection are moved outside of that collection
as the final tip in the outline.
Er You can press the eyeball icon to toggle on and off vieux port visibility.
This will not affect your renders but will allow
you to hide objects and collections while you work
for similar options. You can click this drop down menu in the top right hand corner
to enable select ability toggles and more
and that's it for our collection overview
Collections are very powerful and the
foundation of object organization in blender.