Excuse me for the silly questions, but in the mid of an important project and … (before in blender I just weighted using selections and vertex groups.)
is there a way to select whatever bunch of vertices in mesh edit mode, and make them (those vertices) not be influenced by any bone at all, any vertex group? I know the ‘clean weights’ weight painting solution (paint menu), but I’d prefer a faster solution (not go one by one bone). It’d also be cool a way to select all bones, or any number of them at a time, and “clean weight” for those at a time, not one by one. Besides for me would be much more convenient to do the cleaning of vertices selections (in edit mode), rather than bones, as avoids the guessing of how many bones are affecting those.
I’d like to know if is there a way to force painting “passs through” (paint as well the opposite side,some sort of toggle of this functionality), in occassions is faster, ie: like when weighting fingers. While in other situations is better the standard way.(so not to affect non desired areas)
is there a way to force the weights to like normalize? or however is said… : if you paint over an area using a 1.00 weight brush, it’d (in what I was used in other packages) average with the weights already painted or asigned in those verts to other bones. I am noticing I wont remove any portion of weight until I find the ones affecting those verts and manually reducing their influence…In Max I used to paint over , or number asign, but it allways blended using the last action as “the more influencing”, and when setting pure 1.0 ,“absolute weight” marked, that was totally asigned to the bone, other influences killed (fast and convenient, often). I think is more practical with the manners I mention, but if I am missing a lot of stuff, and simply it is like it is 'cause tehre’s a cleverer workflow than in other applicactions, I’d be more than glad to hear the tricks.
(one other thing that would come handy could be bone heat but only for some bones, but maybe that’s even possible and I just don’t know how.)
Aha… There’s information in that answer, then. Because believe me, I really don’t (or didn’t) know if those are features not existing here, or simply the possibility existed, just I was not aware as what I have rigged till date in Blender, has been with simply vertex groups and numeric asigning weights.
Anyway, certainly are things (features I used in Max) that fasten a weighting task amazingly (that besides mirror weighjts, but we have that already). But I am not requiring it, I know development has its course.(neither is the place for requests )
I mainly suspected there could be some hidden trick I am not aware of…
…just to clarify. I can perfectly rig with weight painting. Was only a question to see if those were implemented with some key shorcut or sth.
Anyway… Would it be clever to suggest somewhere(in which forum section ,or in which site?) as feature? I think blender animation/rigging would benefit strongly for these. Weighting becomes faster and more flexible, so you play more tricky bendings, and end in 50% less time(and is more pleasant) if not more of than before. I am not indeed deadly needing them. I know, if every one asks for features… But… Whenever I remember a clever workflow of Max , XSI or another one, and I research and see that it is not implemented, and Blender workflows could greatly have benefit from it, is ok to suggest it somewhere? I wonder if there is a place to put -previously checked the workflow or feature does not exist- such suggestions.
If not, is ok. I confess for myself would be better if one could rig faster, but after all, it may be a general benefit.
Well, however… Nobody take the impression the weighting is not super good: it is. This could make it better, only. (in case there is not already a not too hacky/time consuming/not-to accurate way to do the same)
I know it’s “another feature”, but even more, in Max (and I was told Maya has it too, I only used Maya for some level editing in a job) you had both in Physique and skin, the possibility to: select some vertices and launch a chart where it showed all bones affecting it, with which weight an dyou could change them all at a time. But the general faster thing to do often was to simply select several bones, and go to skin modifier (you had allways the absolute weight entry field floating at the right, while you were in the weighting proccess…still the checking of joints rotations as you tweak weights is sort of faster in Blender) , set “0”, bang, all those bones would not affect mesh.Now you’d go cleanly weighting with real bones you want…
Also seems with theblender script, if you “clean weights” bone per bone, it’s ok, but if you add new bone chains, and you deleted some that were automatically called like that (Bone.015, Bone.016…) When create new ones, they take the weights they had before…I guess that one is my fault for not deleting the vertex groups or something, just the bones.
Most of what you are asking for should be done before you start weighting your mesh by editing your armature (set which bones should deform the mesh) properly … not that having these options would be so bad …
And yes you can selectively assign bone heat weights to individual bones . Just select the bone you want to bone heat in Weight Paint then W-> Apply Bone Heat Weight to Vertex Groups …
And you don’t really need to normalize the weights by hand, since Blender does it for you automatically. EG: thigh bone weight on knee is 1.000, shin bone weight on knee is 1.000, each bone will influence the knee 50%.
You might also want to check out the python scripts available in weight paint mode, some may be exactly what you’re looking for.
I digged among those scripts… Found quite useful the clean weights paint one. (and in the past used a very early version of mirroring weights, as I used to work with it a lot in Max.)
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