Can anyone explain why Face Maps were removed?
Vertex groups are useless/annoying in some situations where you specifically want to save a complex selection of faces for use later. Reloading a vertex group often requires manual adjustment to get back exactly the faces you want while Face Maps did exactly what I needed.
face map:
vertex group:
It had that use, but I do believe an operator for saving a selection can be done without having a dedicated data-structure for it. The impression I got was that the use the devs. thought it would eventually have never materialized, or that any use it did have can now just be done through attributes.
But in terms of ease of use and familiarity for people coming from other software, it was perfect.
It might not need a dedicated data-structure but it does need a UI and that UI was perfect for existing blender users familiar with vertex groups as well as incoming users familiar with selection sets.
This is likely where the decision was made. Didn’t read the whole thing though.
There is currently UI to create a Face Attribute, to Set Attribute value.
The only thing missing, to reproduce workflow, is UI to select/deselect elements according to active attribute.
I suppose that such operator will be done for Blender 4.0, allowing to make Edge Groups, too.
If you have zen sets addon it solves this problem having unique grouping of vert/face/edges on its own
I already spent my addon budget for the year
I hope edge groups could be added as well as bringing back the face maps functionality with the generic attributes system. I had a teacher at my game creation school who commented to me that it was odd that Blender’s modifiers didn’t support edges for stuff such as the Bevel modifier, which I agree with. I hope both get tackled simultaneously if they are rewriting the system and removing the old one.
These are all fantastic use cases for a generic attributes system. having a custom feature to mark edges for bevel, and a custom feature to mark edges for sharpness, and a custom feature to mark edges for freestyle and a custom feature to mark edges for creasing, and a custom feature to mark faces, and a custom feature to set vertex weights is quickly becoming silly, given the easier, more refined, and more robust option of a single generic attributes system.
spending the time to get that core feature working well will open the doors to integrate all of these diverse features into one feature.
Sounds like something worth waiting for. If you can’t wait, then keep using old versions.
Thanks, just what I needed! Though, there would still be better if there were ways of assigning groups for edges. For example, the current system doesn’t allow you have bevel weights independent of each other, so you can’t mix to different Bevel modifiers that use different sets of edge selections. It would be a nice upgrade to make it work more like Vertex Groups but for edges.
Yes I did not mean to say that face and edge groups would not be useful.
Just that you can use edge data to control the bevel (even with different weights per edge).
An edge/face attribute system would have to include all those options (with strength sliders) to get the same functionality + a group option.
Generate modifier can’t be limited to an area of mesh.
By creating or deleting components of geometry, they are modifying their indexes and loosing what selection or attribute refers to, for following modifiers of stack.
You need to use geometry nodes to be able to refer to a previous state, update selection and attribute according to modeling step.
What is not possible with default bevel modifier will become possible with geometry nodes.
Indeed it is its use case. Anyway, having edge groups would allow more control (and more modifiers). I often find myself short of options other than choosing the max bevel I need and then setting bevel weights in fractions
Edit:
I have deleted this post as it is no longer relevant since this topic has been moved.
What’s the best way in 4.0 to save a selection? My main use case was to be able to select related geometry such as hair / body / nails all as seperate selection sets because otherwise it is a lot of work to re-select those elements.
You mean specifically face selections? You can make a pair of Geometry Tools to save/load face selections as attributes:
FaceSelection.blend (158.9 KB)
The tools are under the select menu in edit mode. If you save that in your asset library, its should appear in every file you open.
So this is for face selection? Can this be done for edges and vertices?
And so this uses the new geometry “tools” features?
And speaking of which, where is the big geometry tools blender thread so I can download stuff people are making?
Yeah, that whole GN solution is way easier than just… ya know, selecting some faces and saving them as a set. 
Yeah these are the new “tools” that use geometry nodes, just change that dropdown in both tools and it will work for whatever you pick.
For the sake of neatness, you might also want to change the default name of the attribute that gets saved. Right now it’s face_selection. It’s in the properties of both of the Group Input nodes.
The big thread is here:
