Weight map import as image - could it ever happen?

Mustakettu85

Hi everyone,

I find using the built-in DS brushes very frustrating. Even for simple tasks, they may leak weights to the other side of the item etc.

Are there any plans to implement importing weight maps painted as images?

I understand that weights are tied to mesh vertices, but since we can copy weights between different meshes using the transfer utility, theoretically it should be possible to have weight data "projected" from an image map corresponding to the current mesh UV. 

Syrus_Dante

Great idea I think in iClone such image maps are used for defining the influence of cloth dynamic, unfortunatly I have no idea how this could be implemented in DazStudio.

 

I find using the built-in DS brushes very frustrating. Even for simple tasks, they may leak weights to the other side of the item etc.

Mask by Symmetry and Respect Selection

Once you have activated Use Symmetry in the Tool Settings pane of the active tool Node Weight Map Brush, you can choose Positive or Negative instead of None in the Mask dropdown menu underneath. Genesis figures have the symmetry on the X axis, this means Mask positive = only paint right side and Mask negative = only paint left side.

I found DazStudio is very picky and likes to have the geometry perfectly symmetrical to have the masking work exactly, especialy towards the center. Of course this dosn't work if this geometry is nothing like symmetrical like eg. with hair items.

The other thing you can do is to switch to the Geometry Editor and select eigther some Facegroups like bodyparts in the Tool Settings pane or just one half of the geometry. Then come back to the Node Weight Map Brush and the polygon selection should still be active. Now you can use the Respect Selection setting in the Tool Settings pane - to only allow to paint on that selection of polygons.

 

Stop Weight Map bleeding to unwanted nearby maps

By using the Paint or Smooth Brush near a joint where the weightmaps of the bones cross over to get this gradient - you allways manipulate at least two maps with that brush stroke. While you paint more influence to one bone the other bone gets less influence. This is called the normalized weightmap painting, where one vertex point of the mesh have to share the maximum of full influence with all the bones involved in the gradient of the joint. You can switch off this normalized weightmap painting. On top of the Tool Settings pane of the Node Weight Map Brush there is this register called Normalize.

If more than two maps/bones have influence in the area you like to paint on the weightmap this can get problematic. Because it can happen that especialy if you are using a smoothing brush with high sensitivity the influence is more and more evenly distributed to all nearby weightmaps - that is called weight map bleeding. To prevent this to happen you can use the Locking register in the the Tool Settings pane of the Node Weight Map Brush to selectivly disable painting/smoothing on certain bones of the figure hirarchy.

 

OK thats all I know about waightmapping in DazStudio maybe it can help someone.

Mustakettu85

Yeah you basically need to pre-plan your every move to get anything done =)

As for implementation of my idea, I guess that it may be possible to write a plugin that could expand on the transfer utility capabilities. But coding in C is totally out of my area of expertise.