[Bf-animsys] Layered Bone Deform

[Bassam Kurdali]

Ok, so since writing this I've talked to Daniel on IRC and I think I can
conditionally approve of this after all:

The main thing we discussed that it could be done without changing
armature code much (maybe not at all?) and not armature interface,
Instead, we could introduce something like sets or folders for Vertex
Groups. The armature modifiers on the mesh object could then take this
Vertex Group Set as an optional argument, and then it would restrict to
those bones/groups. This has some advantages:

1- does what Daniel wants
2- folders or sets could be used purely as organizational tools for long
lists of vgroups, useful for everybody.
3- could solve some issues with auto weights assignment, allowing
restriction to vgroup set (and automatically adding weights into that
sets) which would solve a specific corner case issue (an armature
deforming multiple meshes, with some bones that are specific to some
meshes....) 
4- Vgroup sets could be used as a way to do future features not
specifically related to armatures (for instance, as normalization sets
or so)


On Sun, 2014-11-16 at 11:40 -0500, Bassam Kurdali wrote:
> So is this basically like using more than one armature? If it can be
> achieved with two armatures (or 3) I'm against it; just use those
> armatures, and if the problem is that it is cumbersome to add
> constraints/select bones across multiple armatures, I'd just fix that
> (which would also help animators working with multiple rigs) rather than
> add still more complexity into the system (without actual benefit)
> 
> Remember: make simple things easy, difficult things possible!
> 
> For the record, I'm already rigging with 3 armatures for complex
> characters, sometimes more. I think the issue is the interaction between
> them for the user (adding constraints, multi-pose mode selection) not
> basically jamming multi armatures into one.
> Unless I misunderstood....
> Cheers
> Bassam
> On Sun, 2014-11-16 at 07:54 -0600, Daniel Salazar - patazstudio.com
> wrote:
> > Hi Gaia, thanks for the reply. I'm not sure that's enough, let me
> > explain better.
> > 
> > It's not only about visually organizing different sets of vgroups but
> > more importantly about separating the *auto normalization* of all
> > vgroups. With different layers you can make the modifier only
> > normalize the vgroups in that specific layer.
> > 
> > I have updated the image to add the modifier side of all this (one
> > possible implementation that I discussed with Joshua this morning). It
> > basically only adds a new entry to define the layer (or group or
> > set..) that this modifier should care of, ignoring the rest.
> > 
> > http://3developer.com/tmp/Layered_Deform.png
> > 
> > cheers!
> > 
> > Daniel Salazar
> > patazstudio.com
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Bf-animsys at blender.org
> > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-animsys
> 
> 
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