Smooth Weights 3 is now available for Blender.
The painting-style weight tool has been rebuilt at its core for significantly better performance, particularly on dense production meshes. Operations that previously required a noticeable pause can now be used much more freely during regular skinning work.
On a character with 90,500 vertices:
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Volume flood smoothing is approximately 9× faster, reduced from 31.6 seconds to 3.5 seconds.
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Volume smoothing with 4x oversampling is approximately 27× faster, reduced from 174.9 seconds to 6.6 seconds.
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Brush strokes remain smooth and responsive when working on dense meshes.
The Symmetry Map also grew up. It handles multi-island meshes, topological and partial symmetry, and stores maps more reliably. Maps made in older versions upgrade with one click, and they carry forward into the upcoming SHAPES for Blender.
Here’s the trailer video for version 3: https://youtu.be/3axQ2-ZNsKo
What Smooth Weights Does
Smooth Weights provides a painting-based workflow for smoothing and editing skin weights directly on the character.
Its volume-based smoothing blends weights according to spatial proximity rather than mesh connectivity. This makes it possible to smooth:
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Across gaps
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Between overlapping geometry
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Across separate mesh islands
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Through areas where conventional surface-based smoothing is insufficient
Additional tools include:
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Limiting vertex-group influences while working
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Painting selections directly on the mesh
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Working in pose without repeatedly switching modes
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Mirroring weights through the integrated Symmetry Map
The add-on is intended for character riggers and skinning artists who want cleaner, deformation-ready weights with less manual correction.