I also think having a way to distinguish between vertices belonging to a group (even at zero weight) and vertices not in the group would be a nice improvement.
Another area where keeping "zero-vertices" in a group can be useful is in modeling, where groups are very handy to regroup some vertices, to easily (de)select/show/hide/whatever them. On 14/02/2013 16:22, Gaia wrote: > On 14.02.2013 13:09, Brecht Van Lommel wrote: >> Hi, >> >> On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Gaia<[email protected]> wrote: >>> So i have to ask back: Where would it be bad to get a visual >>> information about unreferenced vs. referenced verts using >>> the black/blue color code ? >> I would think that we should improve our tools so that there are never >> any vertices part of a vertex group with weight zero, and not let the >> user worry about this at all. Why burden the user with an >> implementation detail? > Because it is relevant for some usage scenarios outside of blender. > > I am 100% with you regarding "hide the technical details". And indeed this > specific detail might best be hidden from the user as long as we keep > everything inside of Blender where this detail is unimportant. > > But actually it becomes very important when we look outside of the Blender > universe. And indeed this little difference between unreferenced verts and > zero weighted verts has a huge impact on the display of 3D objects in our > game environment. >> I can see a visualization being useful where vertices with zero/no >> weight are shown in a different color so that you can quickly spot if >> vertices are part of any group, but this should then make no >> distinction between the vertices being internally part of the group or >> not. > We already have dark blue as the color for zero weight. No need to > change that. > "not referenced by any weight group" is a bit fuzzy, because weight > groups can > be used for very different and unrelated purposes, so this visualization > would be > pointless imho. > > But i still believe that getting a visual feedback for "not referenced > by this bone" > is a very useful information. (See next comment below) And actually i do > not > understand where that is a technical "detail" (apart from "blender > doesn't care > so the user should not care either" ... but the universe cares, so do > users ...) >>> There are situations where knowing if a vertex is referenced >>> (even with zero weight) becomes relevant. It can even be >>> wanted that verts are members of a vertex group but weighted >>> to zero (or almost zero). And in such a case cleaning up low/zero >>> weighted vertices with blender cleanup tool might be not practical. >>> And seeing them all in blue doesn't help either. >>> >>> One case where it is mandatory to have each vertex be placed in >>> at least one vertex group is when it comes to create items for >>> game engines outside of Blender. Yes, we already have added a >>> lot of helper tools to our own addons for finding unreferenced >>> verts, visualising them, forbid to export partially unweighted >>> meshes, etc. >>> >>> However getting this little extra visual control would help as well. >> I can see game engine exporters need vertices to all be part of some >> group, but if like Blender they only consider weight> 0 to be really >> part of a group then this can work fine still without exposing >> implementation details to the user. > But it is not about automatically removing zero weighted verts. it is about > feedback about unreferenced weights and feedback about "unintentionally > belonging > to this vertex group" verts. Exporters can not reliably handle that > automatically. > > One very simple example: > > During weighting you unintentionally added some barely noticeable very low > weighted areas in the head of your beloved character while you where > painting > on a foot bone. yes this can be avoided, nevertheless it happens. > > Now try to find these verts on areas which do not belong to the active > bone... > Try to find less dark spots of blue in a sea of dark blue. Mimicry works > well here :) > > Ok, i hear you telling me i can use the "clean weights" tool and be > happy. But what > if i intentionally WANT to have some weights to be set close to zero (or > even zero) ? > Then cleaning the weights might ruin my weight maps. > > And again it sounds very appealing to me: If we had unreferenced weights be > displayed in black, we could quickly step through the vertex groups and > see > blue spots in the black seas and that's much easier to spot. well... > > If that still doesn't make it clear why it is a useful improvement, then > i am running > out of argumentative ideas for now :) > > cheers, > Gaia > _______________________________________________ > Bf-committers mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers > _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
