I was able to get a really good automatic weight configuration using weight control bones.
I added bones to help adjust the automatic weights. These bones are parented to the bone I want to extend the weight on. This allows in a way, to control the shape of the bones when doing automatic weights in blender. Rather than just having one eclipse.
Sounds interesting… could you expand on this further, maybe show some examples?
I was able to edit two of my models without doing any weight painting. I was able to extend the head bone of a dragon creature and have good weight with the jaw. It allowed me to fix the legs of the same dragon creature without doing any weight painting. Using weight control bones I think a model can be rigged only using automatic weights. Never painting.
The weight bone extends the influence of a bone for automatic weight calculation. the bone has a capsule influence of 3d space. By adding child bones the influence area changes shape. So for the head, you can cover the skulls full area of influence. For the legs and arms, the shoulder can be more defined for automatic weights.