Pattern-Based Collections for Blender

Categorising selections of objects within scenes is crucial for various digital content workflows. Blender gives us access to the Collection type through its Python API but lacks in tools (code and non-code) for grouping objects by common properties and metadata. This extension draws inspiration from Pattern-Based Collections for OpenUSD and is built on top of existing standards like RegEx and the JSON format to enable configuration and layering of precise sorting rules for collections in Blender.

Some use cases

• Keep your blend-files tidy as an artist
• Divide thousands of objects into bake/export collections
• Configure model/scene variations from metadata

Important Aspects

Artist-friendly Configuration

Configure, test and reiterate on your collection patterns from the Blender interface

JSON Export

Export and reuse your collection patterns for future projects

Python API

# Assumes you have an active collection

# Reads the json file
bpy.ops.scene.pattern_collection_import(filepath="")
bpy.ops.scene.pattern_collection_sort()  # Sorts the collection

Available Sorting Categories

• Included/Excluded Names
• Included/Excluded Hierarchies
• Included/Excluded Types
• Included/Excluded Materials
• Included/Excluded Collections
• Included/Excluded UV Layers
• Included/Excluded Modifiers
• Included/Excluded Attributes

Optimisation

The extension has the potential of sorting 1K objects in less than one second. I'm continuously searching for more optimisations; however most of the time sorting is spent on unlinking/linking of objects and cannot be parallelised.

Additional Details

• Enable/Disable - Toggle its impact on sorting without completely removing it
• Case Sensitivity - Determines if the item is processed as case-sensitive
• Anchor - An item's relationship to the candidates
  • (Match, Contains, Starts with, Ends with, Match Rgx, Search Rgx, Greater, Less)
• Reserved Attribute Names
  • triangles (alt. tris) - The object's number of triangles (0 for non-meshes)
  • bounding_box (alt. bbox) - The object's bounding box volume (0 for non-meshes)
  • surface_area (alt. area) - The object's surface area (0 for non-meshes)
    • (These can be mixed, e.g., use tris/area to sort by triangle density)

Automatic Sorting

Define your working structure once and let objects be categorised as you create

Potential plans for the distant Future 🚀

• Core changes
  • More generic support for object properties
  • UI Overhaul
• Quality-of-Life improvements
  • Clear/reset the pattern of a collection
  • Copying/Pasting of patterns between collections
  • Collection Pattern Presets
  • Ability to hide sorting categories not in use
  • Exclude objects from sorting
  • Sort all collections at once (and sort order)