Assigning a mesh to every vertex of a vertex group

MBMB · February 22, 2021, 9:13pm

Hi
I want to place a sphere on every vertex of a vertex group. Particle emitter does not work with vertex groups. Is there a way to do it?

THANKS

pxlpaul · February 23, 2021, 1:03am

Hi MB,

Unsure if there’s another solution but you may need to use Sverchok addon for this. It’s very powerful but does have a learning curve.

See Blender Sushi’s snippets about accessing the vertexes of a vertex group here:

From this you can then use the list of vertexes to add your spheres (also using Sverchok).

Cheers,
Paul

julperado · February 23, 2021, 4:56am

Particle emitters do work with vertex groups, just make sure you’re emitting from vertices and choosing the created vertex group on the Density option.

pxlpaul · February 23, 2021, 6:18am

Hi Julperado, MB,

Thank you for pointing this out. This is good to know. If anyone is curious this is one way you could do it Sverchok. Sphere is the object with the Vertex Group defined. Ico is my object that is being instanced at each vertex within the vertex group. Here every other row of vertices was assigned to the group.

Cheers and stay safe!

centauri · February 23, 2021, 6:52am

What about dupliverts option? Just parent the object you want on the vets to the main object and select duplication method to verts

Lumpengnom · February 23, 2021, 8:10am

You could do it in Blender 2.92 natively with Geo Nodes:

julperado · February 23, 2021, 1:06pm

Dupliverts is the fastest way but it can’t use vertex groups so it will instance the child object on all the vertices of the parent object.

Calandro · February 23, 2021, 1:32pm

Unless you make a copy of the vertices you need to another mesh and use that mesh as the parent instead of the original.

julperado · February 23, 2021, 2:11pm

Sure that could be done too, but in that case you’re adding unnecessary complexity, imagine doing that for an animated mesh.
To have more control and keep the process as non-destructive as possible I’d say either go with particles and vertex groups or geometry nodes (for 2.92 on).

Calandro · February 23, 2021, 2:18pm

I am not comparing techniques, just saying that it’s possible to work around the fact that duplivert uses all vertices of an object.

If I needed to make a choice I would directly use particles emitted from vertices and use the vertex group with vertex weight paint not just to control distribution but also to control the size.