Eliminating textures from UV dropdown list

[Chic Aeon]

OK you smart folks. I can't find info on this and I would really like to know.

Is there any way to get rid of some of the textures in the UV window drop down? I frequently try out different textures (mostly in Cycles Render) and sometimes want to continue on with a project using that same base file. It gets VERY hard to find what you are after when the list gets really long.

[Drongle McMahon]

This is a real pain. Generally, if you click the X to unlink the image datablock the image will disappear, and you would think it's number of users should go to zero, but it doesn't. Then if you save and reopen the file, it would be dropped if it was zero users, but it isn't. So it comes back. However, if you now you click on the dropdown, it's listed with a zero (users) next to it. DO NOT click on it. If you do, it will go back to having one user (the editor window?), so that it comes back even if you go through the whole process again. Instead, just save and reopen the file a second time. As long as you do that while it has a zero next to it, it will be dropped on the save/reopen. You might also have to check in the outliner (datablocks view, images, +next to image nome) that the Fake user (the one set when you click F) isn't set. You can reset it there if it is.

Don't ask me why this is so complicated, or why it can't drop it the first time you reopen, or why you can't actually discard it explicitly without reopening. This is one of the intensely annoying idiosyncracies that make sometimes it hard to defend Blender.

 

[Tony Leistone]

hold shift, then hit X,

zero will appear in front of your texture, save your blend file, and reopen and its gone.

[Drongle McMahon]

"hold shift, then hit X"

I don't seem to have understood that. What is the context where that works? i.e. What are you looking at, what is selected, where is the focus. I tried as may things as I could think of, but it never had the desired effect. No doubt I am missing something simple. With the context in the OP, it just types "X" in the edit box of the dropdown. Is it a version thing? I was using 2.75rc2. It would be nice to have this simpler method (although I still can't see why the save/open should be required).

[Tony Leistone]

in the uv/image editor, display the texture you want to remove,
hold shift, then click the X to unlink the image datablock,
in the dropdown browse images, zero will appear in front of the texture
it only works on one texture at a time,
dont display again the texture to be deleted, in the uv/image editor window.
just save, close and reopen
yes it is inconvenient, but for now that seems to be the only way.

[Dree Eames]

I agree. Selecting each unused texture in turn in the UV window then  holding shift while clicking the X to remove them followed by saving and reopening the Blend file has always been the way to remove unwanted unused textures.  

I find the process is much quicker when I then save the file with CTL S and then immediately click "Revert" from the file menu (note an little "double check menu" appears which is is easy to miss when you click revert) and Blender quickly replaces the screen with the revised version.  This takes just a second and *poof* those unwanted textures are gone.

[Drongle McMahon]

Ah. Got it now - I thought youmeant the X key, but you meant the X button. Not exactly what I'd call intuitive, but now I see it does say that in the tooltip. I should read them more carefully!. This does save one of the save/open cycles, so thanks for that. Meanwhile, can anyone explain why it doesn't set it to zero without needing the shift? Why would you want the image to stay there when you have unlinked it from everything? Especially as you can always relink it before saving if you want to? Never mind - ours is not to reason why.

[Dree Eames]

If I'm understanding the Blender manual correctly, it's difficult for Blender to actually determine that an image is unlinked and then automatically dump it when you save the file  (like it does with unused materials that haven't been tagged with "F"/fake user.)  Apparently "Image Views" are counted as users.  I'm mystified by what "image views" might be and I'd appreciate it if someone could explain further.

 Quoting directly from the manual:

 

Removing Datablocks

As covered in Users (Garbage Collection), data-blocks are typically removed when they’re no longer used.

There are some exceptions to this however.

Scenes, text, can be removed directly.

Other data-blocks such as groups and actions can be Unlinked from the Outliner context menu.

Tip

Some data (images especially) is hard to keep track of, especially since image views are counted as users.

For data-blocks that can be unlinked - hold Shift while pressing on the X button, This force-clears the user-count, so the data-block will be removed on reload.

[Drongle McMahon]

I had seen something similar, but when you click the X button without shift, the image does disappear from the view. So that leaves the question of how it is still in use by the image view when it isn't there any more. The only thing I can think of is that it's still there in the drop-down list and that that counts as being used. But it's still in that list when you get the zero next to it, whether with shift-X-button or the save/reopen cycle. So why doesn't that count as being used too. The logic, if there is any, is too convoluted for me.

[Dree Eames]

It's slightly interesting to filter the items list by "data block" and look at what's listed for images:

If there are images in the list, but none in the UV view, each will show 1 user.  

 

You can check "fake user" and make User jump to "2" and if you shift click on "X" as described before over in the UV window, the user number on this filtered list drops to zero.  Unfortunately I cannot seem to find a way to use this list to actually set this parameter to zero or to simply delete/remove the texture.

[Chic Aeon]

Thanks ALL. It took me a couple of tries (not too with it this morning) but  I did get it to work finally. I am a PICTURE gal for the most part LOL, so sometimes it takes me awhile deciphering the words.