Could there be improvements for the Weight Painting?

alex_abz

I am following a tutorial to create a 3D-looking face & I am trying to make the weights work

I came across a few issues with the software which affect my productivity:

I need an opacity for the gradient weight overlay preview, I have a reference with the topology on the image, but as soon as the weight overlay falls over, I can no longer see what's underneath which defeats the purpose. Is there a setting for this and if not, could there be a slider? This is really annoying for me.
Weight painting doesn't seem to support pen pressure? Is Wacom supported? I need to fine tune paint the vertices.
Is there any way to automate the weight distribution based on the mesh shape/volume/area? Like I have a human face and I need a radial gradient weight distribution starting from the center where the nose bridge is towards the edges.
Could there be a tool to calculate the volume of your shape/mesh and start a radial gradient from a certain point outwards with a min/max range? Trying to do it manually it's too much work and usually there's some point amiss.
There's some times that while I am painting, one bone reaches 100% and painting stops, could Spine re-distribute nearby weights to avoid that somehow?
Could there be a hotkey or easier way to quickly try out your weight mesh deformation without having to leave weight painting? (Having to click the bone then the Pose or Translate tool and then back into Weight mode)
Is there the possibility to be able to import and read a normal or depth map or any image to define the weight values of the mesh in the future?

Thanks

alex_abz

Erika

Hello Alex!

Let's get to the answers:

There is currently no way to adjust the overlay opacity. Would it really be useful though if the overlay is a gradient on top of another image? Wouldn't it be better to move the image to the side to try to get the same weights?
Weight painting currently doesn't support pen pressure, nor is wacom supported. How would you like this feature to work in case we'd add it?
In the weights panel there are two buttons that are useful to perform automatic weights to some degree: Auto works wonders with bones that overlap a mesh and soft clothing, tails, etc. The second one is Smooth, which is great because you can select all the weights on the outside, give them a weight, maybe to 100% to a bone, while the center of the mesh stays weighted to the other bone, then press Smooth several times to have Spine calculate intermediate weights for you. It also works if you set a weight to 30% instead of 100%. It's likely one of my favorite tools 😃
If you don't like a vertex to ever reach 100% influence of a certain bone, you should use Replace instead of Add. I may need more details as it isn't entirely clear what you'd like to achieve by reditributing the nearby weights.
I like to paint the weights in animate mode with a test animation that does all the most extreme movements that the mesh is supposed to be able to reach. You can work on the weights directly while they're moving, or stop to a frame then move to another, or even stay in Setup mode, but keep the preview panel open on the side with the animation active to see the result while you edit.
Preview - Spine User Guide
Not at the moment, it seems like an interesting thought, but I guess this would work only if a mesh has two bones bound to it? It might be interesting to elaborate on this suggestion.

Nate

To add a little to Erikari's post:

Can you show how an image under the overlay could be useful? I'm having trouble imagining it. It makes sense for topology, ie creating vertices, but I'm not sure how it would help for weights.
It's best when adjusting weights to add weight rather than subtract, as the results are more likely to be what you want. When reducing the weight for a bone that has 100%, I suppose we could use the nearest bone but I'm not sure that would be what you want.

alex_abz

Sorry for the late reply, made this post from my work account.

a. Okay so about the Weight Overlay opacity, what I see now is:

which is not really very helpful when painting, I just can see the bounds of the image but it'd be helpful if I could easily reference the topology of my rendered image while painting with the overlay on. The weight overlay opacity could be adjusted via a slider in the UI that appears only when the Overlay is turned on. e.g.

b. For the Wacom functionality, it'd be helpful if there was a button in the UI to turn sensitivity on and off, that way pen pressure would be taken into account when painting weights

c. As for the Smooth functionality, I'll try it out, I wasn't sure what was smoothing out and thought it just didn't work for my mesh

d. For the normal or a depth map, that's what that is basically. It's an image that helps define details & depth. Spine could read such image and auto generate the weights. An example of how a depth map would work is with http://depthy.me/#/

I'll try the rest of the suggestions

Erika

Hello, thanks for explaining further! I've collected your suggestions here:
Weights view improvements · #535 · EsotericSoftware/spine-editor

On a side note, doesn't this look like a nasal spray ad image? 😃

alex_abz

On a side note, doesn't this look like a nasal spray ad image?

lol! I thought it reminded me of something!

Thanks for adding my suggestions, these will surely speed the workflow up!