[Bf-funboard] Some skinning feature ideas

[Benjamin Tolputt]

Michael Crawford wrote:
> [RE: Making the change a toggle enabled function] I'm cool with that.  
> Sounds good.
If I have (sort-of) convinced you on this, can we get some feedback from 
others as to whether this is something that can be moved on?
> Yeah...  I dunno.  I would suspect it's more intuitive for new 
> (non-"convert") users.
Possibly, I cannot really argue either way on that (being a "convert"). 
On the other hand, most packages that represent influence weights with 
colour (well, all that I know, but I haven't used the sum total of 
packages available!) have a "full weight" colour representing a "full 
weight / 1.0" deformation influence. XSI, Project Messiah,
> I would think most people would find it easier to judge weight by color...
No arguments here. My confusion stems from the fact that the colour 
value does not mean the same thing from bone to bone, vertex to vertex 
because the meaning changes depending on how many influences the vertex 
has and what colour they are.
> silly idea perhaps.. what about multiplying the value and color for 
> this hypothetical display mode.
You would have to explain this to me somewhat better as I do not 
understand what you mean by this
> Yeah, but whatever you set the "auto-truncate" value to becomes the 
> effective new zero point (if my brain is still working, i need 
> coffee).  If you have stray weights now, they're always going to be 
> bigger than this.
Correct, but that was always the problem for me with "stray weights". I 
don't mind having vertices with weights greater than a certain value. If 
said value is high enough - you can always SEE the fact it is being 
influenced by the selected bone.

> Oh shit.  Where did mesh>tube go? Simpler?  eeh.  I'll patch my source 
> and shut up about it. some obnoxious user is probably going to raise a 
> stink about it at some point anyway :P
*laugh* Each to their own. I have found that (in general) changes in 
Blender have been for the better. The fact that you also still use 
Blender "implies" you feel the same way (even if you don't like ALL 
their decisions). With open-source, there is always a way around said 
road-blocks (Alexander's IBlender is a great example of this)
> Oh heck no it's not obvious at first...
This being the very definition of "unintuitive" *grin*
> I don't know if I would aggree totally with the transportation 
> analogy... Id say some people are faster with horses and some are 
> faster riding...  well something similar to horses.  I think it's a 
> mostly matter of a users familiarity with a given tool when it comes 
> to efficiency.
Analogies always break down somewhere. My point was that so long as the 
option exists to do things the "old way" just as easy as before, there 
shouldn't be any argument about a new method that others find more 
efficient (and there seems to be ample users arguing this point for the 
suggested feature).

Regards,
B.J.Tolputt