Any chance of a tutorial on the weight editor tool?
Alright, I can write up a small one to help you out. It's similar to 3ds Max's rigging tool, just with a few less features
1. Open up a model in the viewer and enable vertices by pressing V.2. For bones, there are three main approaches to selecting them, depending on your preference. You'll be selecting bones to change weights for vertices.
- You can enable selecting them on the model itself by pressing B.
- You can make the bones render smaller so they're less in the way by going to Options->Settings->General and checking "Scale bones with camera" and "Display bones as points".
- You can disable rendering them on the model altogether and use the bone list on the right panel instead (make sure the dropdown on the top of the right panel says "Bones"). You can show all the bones in the order they appear in the model by checking flat at the top, or show them in their hierarchy by unchecking flat. You can also search for bones with the textbox, and check "Contains" to return any bones with the search query in their name. Otherwise it will return bones that start with the search query.
3. This is an optional step but I highly recommend it.
You can disable showing the transform tool used to translate, rotate and scale vertices and bones by changing the dropdown on the top right of the control to "None". It's not needed for weight editing and you don't want to accidentally change a bone or vertex's position while changing weights.
4. Apply an animation to the model or else you won't be able to see any weight changes you make. You can create an animation just for rigging or you can use an animation used in the game to really see how the model looks overall while animated.
5. Open the weight editor by pressing 9 or clicking on Tools->Weight Editor.6. Click on a vertex or select multiple by either clicking and dragging or holding ctrl and clicking on multiple.It's possible to accidentally select vertices that are hidden, on the other side of the model, or in the exact same position as the one you're trying to select, so double check (I probably should've added text that says how many vertices are selected but oh well). Selected vertices will be orange, as long as you can see them.
7. All bones that influence the vertex or vertices you selected will show up in the weight editor.
Now select a bone, either from the list in the weight editor, from the list on the right panel, or one rendered on the model (if you have them visible).Vertices around the bone you selected will light up in colors ranging between red and blue. Blue means the bone you selected has a small influence on that vertex (the vertex moves with the bone only a little bit), red means the bone has either a high influence or completely influences that vertex (the vertex will just move with the bone).
NOTE that if you select multiple vertices, the list of bone weights in the editor will show the average influence of the bone on all of the selected vertices, not just one of them.
8. Next comes changing the influence of the bone you selected. This is done with the buttons to the right of the list in the weight editor. You will be able to see any changes you make immediately update any vertices you have selected.
Each bone can have anywhere between a 0% influence on a vertex to 100%, and the all weights in the list must add up to 100%. If you try to change something that would result in breaking those rules, the change either won't be made or your inputted value will be clamped between 0 and 100 before being set, so keep that in mind.
- "Set" will change the selected bone's influence on the selected vertices to the value in the box next to it. This is best used if you want to rig an entire set of vertices to one bone at the same time.
- "+" or "-" will add or subtract the value in the box next to them to/from the influence of the selected bone. This is best for quickly nudging vertices over larger distances at a time.
- "x" or "/" will multiply or divide the influence of the selected bone by the value in the box next to them. This is best for nudging vertices over smaller distances at a time.
- "Lock" will make the selected bone's influence never change while you edit. Other bone weights will be changed to make sure all weights add up to 100%, but if the bone is locked then it won't. However, if all bones in the weight list except the one you're editing are locked, you won't be able to make any changes.
- "Remove" is the same thing as setting the weight value to 0, which will remove the influence of that bone completely.
9. Lastly, if you select a bone that's not in the weight list, your only options are to set a weight or add to the weight ("Set" and "+"). That will add the selected bone to the list of weights that influence the selected vertices.
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