[Bf-committers] 4 ideas for improving Vertex Group handling ...

[Joshua Leung]

Hi,

I had meant to reply to the earlier post on the bf-animsys list, but it
somehow ended up getting buried.

1) "Autoselect"
Sounds like a good idea.

I agree that keeping this as an option avoids the annoying side of this
option (i.e. keeping a group of vertices you've just removed from one group
selected so that you can easily reassign to the next one), while
simplifying this frequently encountered use case.


2) Select a vgroup also changes active bone
I can see how this could be useful, though I do have some reservations
about it.

In the interests of "convenient little timesavers" though, this probably
falls into the same category as selecting bones when the corresponding
action groups are selected. So, I guess it's OK...


3) Select multiple vgroups
I'm not sure about this one... Doing this is almost certainly going to open
up a whole can of worms.

What specific problems is this intended to solve? From the sounds of
things, it almost sounds like you really just want a "Delete all vgroups"
operator to quickly clear out everything between automatic vgroup binding
attempts...


4) Add a Falloff parameter for "Automatic weight from Bones"
When exactly would this be useful? Also, as I suggested earlier, what would
be the difference between this and allowing the bone envelopes feature to
somehow be used for this purpose?



Regards,
Joshua


On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 4:53 AM, Gaia <gaia.clary at machinimatrix.org> wrote:

> Hi;
>
> I have 3 ideas about the Vertex Groups panel. Before i go into the
> details: i can work on the implementation of these features if they get
> accepted. In that case i will create tasks for each accepted feature and
> assign myself... just to be clear here :)
>
> 1.) Add an option "autoselect":
> ===============================
>
> When this option is disabled all keeps is as it is now.
> When the option is enabled, then selecting a vertex group from the list
> will automatically select all associated verts of that vgroup and
> deselect all other verts. This option would allow to quickly step
> through vertex groups and inspect their content visually.
>
> Right now we have to:
>
> - select vgroup
> - deselect all verts
> - Select the vgroup verts
>
> Note: the auto select would only apply when a vgroup is selected (by
> click on its list entry). So you still can select/deselect verts in the
> 3d view and Assign/Remove/Select/Deselect selection from the active vgroup.
>
> 2.) Select a vgroup also selects active bone:
> =============================================
>
> When the assigned armature is in pose mode, then selecting a vgroup
> should also select the associated bone (if the vgroup is bone related).
> Right now selecting a bone weight group on the Vertex Group List does
> not change the active bone. Imo this is rather confusing.
>
> 3.) Select multiple vgroups:
> ============================
>
> The idea is to be able to select multiple vgroups (the last selected
> vgroup is always the active vgroup). Then all operations could be
> performed on all selected groups. The most prominent operation: Delete
> selected ;)
>
> Right now when i want to remove a couple of vgroups in a row, then i
> have to select each of them, then delete it one at a time.
>
> 4.) Add a Falloff parameter for "Automatic weight from Bones"
> =============================================================
>
> Right now automatic weight from Bones is fully automatic with
> no possibility to adjust the calculations. However sometimes
> it would be good to adjust the distance of influence in certain
> cases. So the idea is to add an influence slider to the Operator Panel
> that would define a falloff distance.
>
> Actually this could possibly be combined with "Weight from Envelopes"
> but i am not sure if that would work well.
>
> =============================================================
>
> I hope i could explain well what the features are supposed to do.
> Thanks for any feedback
>
> cheers,
> Gaia
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