Filter and display only render setup members in the Outliner

For better organization and easy navigation, you may want to streamline the Outliner to display only the members of your render layer(s) or collection(s). Alternatively, you may want to do the reverse, and display only nodes that are not members of your render layer(s).

In the Outliner Display menu, enable Render Setup Filter. A filter drop-down list appears below the Search field that allows you to switch among the following display options:

• Master Layer: All nodes in your scene are listed in the Outliner.
• Inside Selected Layers:

  Select one or more layers in the Render Setup editor, or one or more collections, or a combination of layers and collections, then select this option.

  When a layer is selected, all nodes that belong to the collections of that layer are displayed. When a collection is selected, all nodes that belong to that collection are displayed. When a combination is selected, then the union of the nodes encompassed by the selection is displayed.

• Outside Selected Layers: The reverse of Inside Selected Layers. Select one or more layers in the Render Setup editor, or one or more collections, or a combination of layers and collections, then select this option.
  Note: This option is useful for identifying nodes that should belong to a collection, but are missing from the collection due to a mistake in the spelling of their names.
• Inside All Layers: All nodes that are members of collections (and therefore layers) are listed in the Outliner.
• Outside All Layers: All nodes that are not members of collections (and therefore layers) are listed in the Outliner.

Note: You can also access these options via the Show > Objects menu.

Identifying render layer members in a hierarchy

All render setup members are denoted with a yellow vertical bar in the Outliner. In this example, Mesh_Killamari_Body, Mesh_Killamari_Eyes, Mesh_Killamari_Eyes_Glass are all members of collections. Because they are children of the LOD0 hierarchy and of the Mesh_All hierarchy, it is impossible to list them without also listing their parent nodes in the tree. Therefore, they are distinguished with the yellow vertical bar.

Note: Although the parent nodes are listed in the Outliner, they are not part of any collection, and therefore overrides are not applied to them. For example, the Translate override in this example only applies to Mesh_Killamari_Body, Mesh_Killamari_Eyes, Mesh_Killamari_Eyes_Glass nodes, but not to the LOD0 and Mesh_All nodes.

Lock your filter selection

Click the lock icon to lock the filter you selected to avoid inadvertently changing it. The icon appears with a blue background when the filter is in the locked state. You must toggle off the lock icon to switch to another filter.

Troubleshoot missing collection members using the Outside Selected Layers filter

If you populate your collection with an expression, objects or nodes may be missing from your collection if they are named incorrectly. For example, if you populate a collection using *Window*, and glassWindow7 is misnamed glassWnidow7, then it will not be included in the collection.

Select the Outside Selected Layers filter to list the nodes that are not part of your render layer(s) to easily identify the misnamed collection members.

Filter using scripting

A new -pythonModule flag has been added to the itemFilter command that allows you to run a Python function as the filter. An example is as follows:

# Create a filter that runs a Python function as the filter
intersectionFilter = cmds.itemFilter( -byScript='myFilterProc' -pythonModule='myModule' ) 

This will run the Python function declared as follows:

def myFilterProc(*args, **keywordArgs) :
    return True