I’m trying to understand the term “weight” in the 3D context. I’ve come across “Bevel weight” and “weight painting.” While I get their specific uses, I wonder about the broader meaning of “weight” in 3D. I have searched online but haven’t found an explanation, so I’m reaching out to you in hopes of gaining a deeper understanding.
It’s less of a 3D term and more of a math term generally- weight means the influence that a part has on a whole. For example, weighted averages in math work something like this - let’s say you have a set of (2,5,8). The normal average would be 5. However, if we assign weights of (.8, .1, .1) to that set, now our formula would be (set element 1 * weight) + (set element 2 * weight)… / number of set items. Our weighted average would then be .96
Weights show up in a wide variety of non-3D contexts; for example, shareholding voting is weighted voting. If one share holder holds 40 shares and one holds 1 share, the first shareholder’s vote is counted as 40x the second’s- this is weighed voting.
In the context of voting, weights are also used in drawing voting maps to preserve minority voices.
As for why “weights”, the shareholder example works well- 40 shares are heavier than 1 share. If you put the certificates for those shares on scale, the shareholder with 40 would literally outweigh the shareholder with 1
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Thank you for explaining; I’m not sure I fully understand what you mean, maybe because it’s the end of my workday. But how does the term ‘weight’ work in relation to the functions of ‘bevel weight’ and ‘weight paint’.
Hopefully a picture is worth a thousand words here…
Here is a grid I have weight painted.
Here is the grid with the resulting weights used as a multiplyer with scale.
Hope that helps.
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Weight painting uses weighted averages, where the elements of the set are bones and the final result is the influence on a vertex.
Bevel weight does the same thing; it determines the influence of the bevel on vertices
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Ahh, Thank you both! Now I understand!
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