Explorer+ | A Unity-like Explorer

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#1

Icon

Install Explorer+

Hi there!

I’ve been currently working on an explorer that essentially mimics a lot of Unity’s explorer features. Pictures speak louder than words, so here’s some screenshots:

Screenshots

List View

List View
List View782×483 40.2 KB

Grid View

Grid View
Grid View786×482 47.9 KB

Notice the part thumbnails for previews

Side-by-Side View

image
image1176×453 36.1 KB

Now that you’ve seen it, here’s more details.

Why?

If you look at the list view screenshot above, you can see that there’s an “Assets” folder. All of the assets inside of that folder are modular, so I can easily build things since they all connect to each other. Roblox does not have an easy solution to view and place these assets. You can either 1. Blindly copy/paste from the explorer until you have what you want. 2. Have a place with all the assets inside that you can copy/paste from. Or 3. Over-engineer a plugin that solves the issue.

Features

The Basics
I’m working on re-creating the original explorer features. Things like searching and context menus (which are both currently partially implemented). Things like multiselect and object insertion is being worked on.

List View
Just like the regular explorer

Grid View
Easily preview parts and models with a scalable grid view.

Side-by-Side Mode
The best of both worlds! Have a list view on the left side while having the grid view on the right side.

Stamp Mode
Stamp mode allows you to stamp a selected object. Autogrid uses the objects’ size as a grid when stamping, otherwise stamping follows the editors’ Move value in the Model window as the grid. Stamp mode is still being worked on.

Insert Mode
Insert mode allows you to double-click on models and parts in the explorer to quickly duplicate them in front of your camera. You can also use the middle-mouse button to do this without toggling insert mode.

Fresh, Modern Icons
Spice up your life with these fantastic icons. Courtesy of @Elttob ( Vanilla [2.1] - A modern look for your Studio )

Planned

Paint Mode

The ability to select multiple objects and paint them on the world (Like @XAXA’s Brushtool)

Favorites

Favorite objects (e.g. folders) so you can easily access them from anywhere

Multi-select and Grouping

Two crucial features to an explorer

Instance Adding

Roblox has their small menu for adding instances which I will bring to Explorer+!

…And more
When I can think of them

Problems

Performance
When there are many, many objects to display, the plugin does not handle it well. I will be looking to optimize later.
Placements
For example, the Workspace in the original explorer is at the top, while in Explorer+ it is at the bottom. I would personally like it to be 1-to-1 with the original. Edit: I’ve noticed objects in the explorer have a priority with the class type, and then the name. I have slowly started learning about this priority and have made folders, scripts, workspace, and models one-to-one with the original explorer!

Credits

Definitely let me know if this is of any use to you! I would be happy to hear suggestions.

Updates

  • Built-in Update Checker

  • Settings menu!
    image

  • Side-by-side view!:

    image
    image738×457 29.8 KB

  • Rename objects

  • You can now hold and drag to set orientation with the stamp tool

  • Created a rudimentary instance adder

  • Added drag-and-drop reparenting

  • Added lazy-loading for object thumbnails

81 Likes
#2

This is definitely one of the best plugins I’ve seen in a while. I think the next step is to make a Properties+ plugin :joy:

8 Likes
#4

I recommend adding ChangeHistoryService support to when you delete an item from the explorer and you want to redo it saves that.

Now it doesn’t seem to have any way to add instances, which doesn’t make it a replacement explorer for me. If you can fix these bugs overall I can definitely see this becoming a replacement explorer.

5 Likes
#5

Definitely going to add the ability to add instances! I have used ChangeHistoryService, but it doesn’t look like it’s working right. I’ll look into fixing that, thanks! There’s definitely still things to work out.

4 Likes
#6

i’ve never used unity before but this looks so cool!!
will definitely try it out, default explorer is pretty bad anyways :joy:

3 Likes
#7

This looks great! One feature I’d recommend is adding the ability to hide certain objects, or only show the children of a specific parent.

Typo

2 Likes
#8

I downloaded it and tried it out. It is really cool! I really liked the fact that it simply looks so much better, and has the feature where you can see the specific part in the Explorer, but there are some issues I do have.

Unfortunately, when I was building and modeling, the Explorer is useless because of the fact that first, you cannot select multiple objects at once, rendering grouping them impossible, and second, it has some bugs where after I used the default explorer to Group and ungroup objects, it does not show up properly on the Explorer until you close the game and reopen it. Third, you are unable to move the object’s location with Explorer. Finally, its minimum size is a bit large, making my screen hard to see. I would love to see these issues be fixed, but besides that, I really liked Explorer+!

The only thing I really have to do to fix issues 1 and 3 is to simply just insert Explorer to where Explorer+ is and switch to default explorer when building. Issue 2, I would just have to manually save and exit the game and then reenter after finishing a building project, and to deal with issue 4, I would just simply reorganize my Studio to simplify it and make it more compact.

2 Likes
#9

Absolutely a crucial feature! I will be working on that soon.

Just fixed that one now, thank you.

Another crucial feature that I will work on soon!

As for the minimum size, I will work on making the UI more responsive so it can be smaller. Thanks for all the good feedback!

2 Likes
#10

Does this have support for drag and drop reparenting? If no then please include that in your todo list, I would like to see if this can be a proper explorer replacement since the default explorer on Studio lags every qt gui everytime I do drag and drop reparenting (this is probably because I’m on Linux)

3 Likes
#11

I’ve made an explorer plugin (not available to download) before, which I tried to make 1:1 with the original explorer. Had the same issue with thousands of UI instances starting to slow down studio.

Never got around to finishing it, but I suggest creating regions per a pre set amount of instances visible. When about to load those regions, then create more UI instance labels.

Think of it like streaming enabled, but for UI

3 Likes
#12

Adding on to my original post it would be crucial to also be able to open scripts with the explorer.

2 Likes
#13

If you right-click on a script you can press Open in the context menu. It’s a little weird in this explorer since double clicking something goes to the children. I’ll have to figure out what behavior is best.

Absolutely, good idea. The biggest source of lag is the thumbnail previews for objects, so I’ll probably lazy-load those in. That’ll definitely help!

Added to the to-do list.

3 Likes
#14

I’m going to install this once it matures a bit more, but this is a great plugin! As someone who has used Unity before in development I’ll be interested to see where this goes.

2 Likes
#15

so for some reason, it only works on new places i create?
when i boot up a place i’ve worked on before the explorer menu doesn’t show up… but when i create a new, completely blank one, it works for some reason?

i’ve tried disabling/re-enabling the plugin, but it does nothing on places i’ve worked on before

1 Like
#16

That’s really weird. Is it being hidden as a tab somewhere, or is there any error code in the output?

1 Like
#17

there is no errors in the output, the tab doesn’t appear in the top bar GUI in studio. it is quite odd

1 Like
#18

Like the idea of this plugin.
Actually once I wanted to create this too, but there are some things you just can’t do.
And I cancelled, because you can’t do this feature:
Save as Local Plugin

It’s the most important feature for me. Also, you can’t access some services from the plugin.
Aaand… You can’t really make this thing neither:
image
And performance is also a big problem ofcourse.

The idea is very good, and the UI looks sick too, but it’s impossible to compete with the built-in explorer.

I suggest trying to give a new name to the plugin, because this is more like an “Instance Viewer” or “Object Manager”, something like that. People could get confused by hearing “Explorer+”, because this is not a better explorer, just an extension for it.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to say that this plugin is bad, because it’s not! It’s good for builders (maybe), but as long as it can’t do simple things as this:
image
(and it’s NOT your fault, it’s Roblox’s fault that you can’t do that.), I think a plugin like this is just not useful.

Thanks for reading!

-Xsticcy

2 Likes
#19

He could implement a object inserter by getting the mouse position and moving it to the mouse position, however the save as plugin would be a huge issue.

2 Likes
#20

It’s true you won’t ever be able to do everything with this plugin, but I think I can replicate the majority of the original explorer. These buttons, for example, will never be implemented:
image
Which is a problem for some, but I personally don’t use these buttons often.

It’s definitely possible to re-create the instance adder! It might not be one-to-one with the original, but it’s definitely doable.

I will be ironing out performance issues when I complete some of the major functions. I’m not sure if it will ever be as performant as the original though, that is true, but I believe I can make it very negligible.

I do agree somewhat with the name change, and I’ll consider it moving forward.

2 Likes
#21

I’m pretty sure you can actually implement all of those except for the one @Xsticcy mentioned (convert to package and export selection might not work as well, I don’t know).

Going to download this and see how I will get on with it

1 Like