Experimenting with Blender, I put a simple mesh next to a bone, with some vertices closer than others to the bone. I then made the mesh a child of the bone using: ctrl+P >> “with Automatic Weights.” Using weight painting, I colored some vertices red, some yellow, some green and some blue. I expected that when I rotated the bone red would move farther than yellow, and yellow farther than green. But I found that the non-blue vertices move as a block with the bone. (As expected, though, the blue doesn’t move at all.) Is this the way it’s supposed to work?
If there’s only 1 bone then even the smallest amount of weight on a vertex will have it moved completely. Use multiple bones to properly divide the weight
EDIT: so basically, yes, different colors mean different weight. From blue (no weight) to red (full weight). But you need to use multiple bones to see the effect
Thanks, Sago.