[Bf-funboard] Re: Some skinning feature ideas

[Tony Mullen]

> the problem I'm seeing is a lot of you suggesting new features, actually
> don't know some of the ones already there, in some cases giving you the
> same or similar functionality to what you ask for.

I'm not sure if this was directed towards me, but since my suggestions
are what seemed to inspire it I'll point out that while numerous
people suggested hacks or workarounds for the example problems that I
described, (not all of which I'd been aware of, and I appreciate the
tips) none of the methods described were similar in actual
functionality to what I proposed, which I still think would improve
how weight painting works.

> The can mean one of two things: either you're exceptionally lazy, or the
> current interface lacks in design. I tend to think the latter is more
> true than the former.
> People using blender in production for rigging (malefico, myself,
> others) tend to know all the tricks. Some of them were implemented
> during plumiferos/orange to directly fill a need.

In my opinion, given the state of documentation, it is not possible
for a lazy person to become an intermediate or advanced user of
Blender at all, so that possibility is right out.  I also don't think
it's realistic to think that interface design could make every single
function, no matter how specialized or obscure, totally obvious
without documentation.  As you say, many of these tricks were
implemented at the direct request of the people you mention, and as
often as not the documentation for these tricks amounts to a single
sentence somewhere on the Internet.  Documentation is progressing, but
it is always going to lag behind functionality.

> solutions myself, but I feel that this will get only worse if the new
> features proposed are added- then we will get another generation of
> users asking for the same things, while some seasoned users will say
> "but you can do this five different ways already!, the real problem is
> in X"

I think a very good example of this is what I'm talking about now,
except that I'm the one saying that.  I described functionality where
one could assign a true influence value of one for a specific bone to
a vertex.  This is a simple thing to want to do, and I think a common
thing to want to do, but it can't be done now.  But that I'm getting
is people telling me various ways that I can retrieve a list of all
the bones that influence that vertex, in order to make it easier for
me to go to each bone one by one and set its influence at zero, in
order that the original bone I wanted to paint at 1 will be the sole
influence.  Indeed, this  allows me to do the same thing, except in
about a half a dozen more steps.  Malefico said that getting this bone
list is a very helpful thing in his work, but I think that the feature
I proposed would (at least in most cases) enable him to achieve his
goal in fewer steps, without ever having to retrieve this list in the
first place.

So to paraphrase your frustrated quote, I'm saying "but I can find the
influencing bones five different ways already! the real problem is
that I want full control over setting one specific weight so that I
don't have to care about all those other bones!"