Collections

Collections

There can be many objects in a scene: A typical stage scene consists of furniture, props, lights, and backdrops. Blender helps you keep everything organized by allowing you to group like objects together. Objects can be grouped together without any kind of transformation relationship (unlike parenting). Collections are used to just logically organize your scene, or to facilitate one-step appending or linking between files or across scenes.

Collections Tab

Reference

Menu:

Properties ‣ Collection Properties

Collection properties tab allows convenient access to properties for the active collection.

../../_images/scene-layout_collections_property_panel.png — Collection properties.

Restrictions

Selectable

Toggles the ability to select the objects from the 3D Viewport. This is useful for if you have placed something in the scene and do not want to accidentally select it when working on something else.

Disable in Renders

Enables/disables visibility of the collection in renders.

Holdout

Objects inside this collection will generate a holdout/mask in the active view layer.

Indirect Only

Objects inside this collection will only contribute to the final image indirectly through shadows and reflections.

Instancing

Instance Offset X, Y Z

Applies a spatial offset of the instanced collections from the original object’s origin.

Exporters

Each collection can be exported to a number of various file formats. These exporters are available globally, see Importing & Exporting Files, however, this panel streamlines the process of re-exporting the same asset(s) repeatedly. For example when creating glTF assets for a game and iterating on the look, or when using Blender in a studio pipeline to create USD assets.

The following file formats are supported, see each for the documentation of export parameters:

Exporter List

A list view of all the enabled exporters for the active collection. The selecting an exporter from the list will show it’s options in a sub panel below.

Exporters can be added/removed through the + and - icons to right of the Exporter list.

Export All

Exports all exports for the active collection.

Tip

Use File ‣ Export All Collections to export all exporters for all collections.

Line Art

Usage

How the collection is loaded into line art. Child objects of the collection can override this setting if they wish in Object Properties.

Include:

Generate feature lines for this collection.

Occlusion Only:

Objects in the collection will only cause occlusion to existing feature lines and their geometry stay invisible.

Exclude:

Objects in this collection will not be loaded into line art at all.

Intersection Only:

Objects in the collection will only produce intersection lines in the scene and their own geometry stay invisible.

No Intersection:

Include this collection but do not generate intersection lines.

Force Intersection:

Generate intersection lines even with objects that disabled intersection.

Collection Mask

Use custom intersection mask for faces in this collection. Intersection masks can be used by the Line Art modifier to filter lines. See Collection Masks for more information.

Mask

Intersections generated by this collection will have this mask value.

Intersection Priority

Assigns an intersection priority value for this collection. The intersection line will be included into the object with the higher intersection priority value.

Custom Properties

Create and manage your own properties to store data in the collection’s data block. See the Custom Properties page for more information.

Reference

Mode:

Object Mode

Menu:

Object ‣ Collection

Shortcut:

M, Shift-M, Ctrl-G, etc.

Move to Collection M

Move selected objects to an existing or new collection.

Link to Collection Shift-M

Add selected objects to a collection, while keeping them in their current collection. This way objects can appear in multiple collections. A new collection can be created in the pop-up.

Create New Collection Ctrl-G

Creates a new collection and adds the selected object(s) to it. The name of the new collection can be specified in the Create New Collection Adjust Last Operation panel. This collection is not linked to the active scene.

Remove from Collection Ctrl-Alt-G

Remove the selected objects from a collection. If the object belongs to more than one collection, a pop-up lets you select the collection and an option to remove it from all collections.

Remove from All Collections Shift-Ctrl-Alt-G

Remove the selected objects from all collections.

Add Selected to Active Collection Shift-Ctrl-G

Adds the selected objects to the collections to which the active object belongs.

Remove Selected from Active Collection Shift-Alt-G

Causes the selected objects to be removed from the collections to which the active object belongs.

Collections Panel

Reference

Mode:

Object Mode

Panel:

Object tab ‣ Collections

All collections that an object has been assigned to are listed in the Properties Object tab ‣ Collections panel.

Add to Collection

Adds the selected object to a collection. A pop-up lets you specify the collection to add to.

New +

Creates a new collection and adds the selected object to it.

Name

To rename a collection, simply click in the collections name field.

Remove X

To remove an object from a collection, find the name of the collection from which you wish to remove the object, and click the X button to the right of the collection name.

Specials

Unlink Collection, Select Collection, Set Offset from Cursor

Offset

Applies a spatial offset of the instanced collections from the original object’s origin.

Collections

Collections

Collections Tab

Restrictions

Instancing

Exporters

Line Art

Custom Properties

Collections Menu

Collections Panel