Isolate points during weight painting?

[Kerro Perro]

This seems like a real simple nooby thing but i can't seem to figure it out: how do isolate a group of points/polys on a mesh for weight painting?

I tried hiding the others or using clusters but it always keeps the rest of the mesh "paintable" - i hope that statement makes sense ;)

I know i can use a selection in the weight editor but i find that hard to use with things more complicated than 0-1 weight maps, i really just want to paint weights on isolated parts - any way to do this?

[EricTRocks]

Not that I know of.

[rray]

Something that could work for you is to use a disconnect op on the polygons you'd like to paint on -- weight painting stays within those limits then when you don't move the brush out of the area. After you're finished you can delete the disconnect op.

[EricTRocks]

The above should work but may change point order if that is a concern.

[rray]

You're right - point order on the insides stay ok but problem with this is the border points, they keep weights from a random side after reconnect.

** disconnect and reconnect works great with UVs though as sample order doesn't change (useful for some unwrap UV workflows) .. but OT )

[Kerro Perro]

Something that could work for you is to use a disconnect op on the polygons you'd like to paint on -- weight painting stays within those limits then when you don't move the brush out of the area. After you're finished you can delete the disconnect op.

Ah well that doesn't really solve my problem: i have a complex mesh made up of little parts and i keep accidentaly painting the wrong parts so to speak - so i have to fiddle around and find akward camera angles to paint the few points i want to fix. I don't think disconnecting will really help that much...

Ah well sounds like i have no other choice, thanks anyway guys!

[RichardCulver]

Well maybe this is a little late:

You mentioned clusters. I can assume you mean that you are actually Weight Painting by Softimage definition and not Envelope Painting. (Which is synonymous with Weight Painting in some other apps)

If so, there are several ways this could have gone wrong. First, if you initially applied a weight map to the entire object and you are painting on that map, then there is no way to isolate the points unless you create another cluster and create another map on that cluster. Because applying a map to the object makes a cluster that includes all of the points in the object. Also you'd have to have the new map (applied to the new cluster selected) (in the explorer) in order to paint on it separately.

I am not sure if this would be the preferred method anyway. But it might be where things went wrong.

There is another method that would work probably better.

Create a cluster and weight map, say, of only one point. Or a few points, or say an easy-to-paint portion of the object. But do not include the parts you want to go in and isolate.

From there you can simply leave the explorer open, Select points you want to paint, Cntl click the cluster which has the weight map and then choose "Add to cluster" from the Edit Menu. Then resume painting. You could keep going this way, but it would be somewhat limiting as the map and cluster got more and more complex.

This may or may not work for your situation. Just tossing out ideas.

[druitre]

Hi Kerro, I know it isn't the same but thought of this thread when I saw this
Maybe you can somehow benefit from it.

cheers,
Jasper

[grahamef]

You can temporarily lock the weights of the points you don't want to affect. It's not the smoothest workflow but:

1. Select the points you DO want to affect.
2. Select > Invert Using Filter.
3. In the weight editor (Ctrl+E), click Lock Wt. (Make sure that the lock icon is not active first.)
4. Paint away.
5. When done, Clear Locks to remove all locks or select particular points and Unlock Wt.

[Kerro Perro]

@Richard: ah no sorry i did mean envelope not weight painting...

@Druitre: not really for the thing i posted about but actually very interesting stuff! Many uses for those!

@Grahamef: that was exactly what i was looking for! Works perfectly, nice one!

[RichardCulver]

No prbs.

Agreed, that is indeed the elegant solution! Perfect.

Thanks here too grahamef!