[Bf-animsys] 2.68 Improvements to weight Painting tools

[Gaia]

Hi, All;

Recently i have started working on some improvements
to the weight paint tools. And Ideasman_42 helped me
a lot on that task. Thanks again for the support!

The improvements which have already been implemented are:

* A new filter option "Subset" for the weight tools:
   this option defines the set of weights
   on which the tools will operate. We have
   defined following subsets:

   - Active vertex Group(default)
   - Weights of selected bones
   - Weights of all deform bones
   - All vertex Groups

This option has been added so far to the following tools:

   - Invert
   - Clean
   - Levels
   - Limit total


* Improvements on the "Vertex Weight" editor

   Blender has a weight map editor since a long time.
   It islocated in theproperties sidebar of the tool shelf.
   This editor allowsus to set weights by hand for each
   vertex, or for the currentselection of vertices.

   I have improved the editor as follows:

   - It is now also available in Weight Paint Mode
     when vertex selection mask is enabled
   - It allows to select the displayed weight group
     by click on the weight group name
   - It allows to copy active vertex weight to selected
     vertsas long as the selected are in the same
weight group (as before)
   - It allows to delete a weight from a weight group

So far for what we have right now. If you like, you
can check this document to see a comparison between
what we have up to Blender 2.67 and what Blender 2.68
will change:

http://blog.machinimatrix.org/weight-adjustments/

Feedback for the current development state is appreciated :)

=========================================================

Proposals for further improvements:

*Adding "Subset" option to more Tools:

   If it makes sense to you i will add the option also to

   - Normalize
   - Mirror
   - Transfer weights

* Make a continuous "Paste" function:

   Instead of clicking the Paste icon on demand, we could
   add an optionto paste continuously while the weight of
   the active vertex changes.This would allow to interactively
   adjust a loop for example, or an entire area by dragging
   one weight in the weight editor.

* Add different Paste modes:
   When we use the "Paste" function to copy the weight of
   the active vertex to the selection,we could also enable
   different copy modes:

   - lighten
   - darken
   - add
   - subtract

   These modifiers can appear in the Operator panel
(lower left corner of Tool shelf)

* Add the Subset Feature.
   This would allow to paste only to a subset of weight maps.
   the option would also appear in the operator Panel once
   the "Paste" function has been activated.

Please let me know your opinion about what we have already and about
the proposals. maybe there are other features related to the weight editor
which would make sense to you. then please tell your ideas as well :)

Thanks a lot for reading up to here.
-gaia-