[Bf-animsys] 2.68 Improvements to weight Painting tools

[Gaia]

Hi, Nathan;

Thanks for your ideas. see my replies on the
text below:

On 18.06.2013 01:13, Nathan Vegdahl wrote:
> Hi Gaia,
> The subset modes are a great idea!  It would be cool to add "selected
> modifier" or something like that, which allows the user to specify a
> particular mesh modifier from which relevant vertex groups will be
> pulled to operate on.  Something similar for getting vertex groups
> from shape keys could also be cool.

Yes, i think it would make a lot of sense if we could exactly define 
which vgroups
should be affected. However currently modifiers can not be "selected". 
So i am
not sure how we can implement that best.

well, we maybe could add something like "vgroup display layers" some time
in the future. But this sounds like a whole new level of extra complexity.

>> 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.
> I would rather see an "average weight" mode, which displays the mean
> weight of all selected vertices for each VG, which you can then
> manipulate.  I'm not entirely sure what the best behaviors for that
> would be, though, in terms of how e.g. dragging vs typing values would
> affect the vertex weights.  Maybe dragging could scale the values
> appropriately for each vertex, but entering a value directly would set
> it for all vertices...?

That is what i wanted to adress in the "Add different Paste modes" proposal
so when continuous paste is enabled, then the paste mode would define what
happens:

- add (add the difference of a change to the selected verts)
- replace (copies the weights to the selected verts)

I meanwhile believe that these 2 modes are the only reasonable modes
we can provide.

Replacing the display by average weight when multiple verts are selected
makes sense to me.

-gaia-

>
> --Nathan
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 4:33 AM, Gaia <gaia.clary at machinimatrix.org> wrote:
>> 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-
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bf-animsys mailing list
>> Bf-animsys at blender.org
>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-animsys
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-animsys mailing list
> Bf-animsys at blender.org
> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-animsys