Weightlifter add-on for Blender is now free

Weightlifter

In a previous article I mentioned that I stopped publishing add-ons on blender market because basically I was done with it it: I didn't earn enough to warrant the amount of effort that goes into maintaining and supporting add-ons.

However, there is still quite some interest in some of the add-ons, and so I decided to open source some of the add-ons and make them available for free. The first one was Snap! but now it is Weightlifters turn, my very first add-on published on BlenderMarket (now Superhive), back in 2014 (!)

Weightlifter is the Swiss army knife of recording mesh attributes to vertex weights or -colors. Anything from whether a vertex is visible from the camera to its slope or curvature can be converted to weight maps or vertex colors, and much more.

Technically Weightlifter already was open source, at least the source code was, but now I'm also open sourcing the manual, and that means that you can download both the source and the manual from this GitHub repository.

This repository is still a work in progress and the manual hasn't been updated for Blender 4.x yet, but the code is and will run on 4.4. For now, simple download weightlifter.py and use the install from filesystem in the add-ons section. Then read the manual!

To give you some idea of its capabilities, there is a video playlist on YouTube (but they show old versions of Blender).

WeightLifter add-on verified for Blender 4.1

 

WeightLifter has been verified for 4.1 compatibility. It has been tested with the 4.1.1 version of April 16, 2024  and no modifications were needed to make it compatible. If you still encounter a bug, please let me know so that I can have a look at it.

WeightLifter is available on BlenderMarket. This update is free for customers who bought previous versions of WeightLifter.

WeightLifter is an add-on that can calculate all sorts of information and store this into vertex groups or vertex color layers. It can for example determine the visibility of vertices for a certain camera or the distance to some light source and much, much more (the add-on comes with a 30 page fully illustrated manual), information that can for example be used as a density map in particle systems. You can even bake this information if your scene is animated. 

The future

The code in the add-on is very old (10 years, which in Internet terms is ancient) and it does show its age in the way it is structured and also, as I experience myself, it is not very fast, especially on large meshes.

I was tempted to modernize it, and improve its speed if possible, but this might also be an opportunity to add features. So if you have an idea or suggestion, please drop me a note in the contact box at the top right of the page or via BlenderMarket and I'll be happy to consider it.

In its current form it is unlikely it will be supported beyond Blender 4.2 LTS

WeightLifter add-on updated for Blender 4.0

WeightLifter has been been updated for 4.0 compatibility. It has been tested with the daily built of November 3rd  and only minor modifications were needed to make it compatible. If you still encounter a bug, please let me know so that I can have a look at it.

WeightLifter is available on BlenderMarket. This update is free for customers who bought previous versions of WeightLifter.

WeightLifter is an add-on that can calculate all sorts of information and store this into vertex groups or vertex color layers. It can for example determine the visibility of vertices for a certain camera or the distance to some light source and much, much more (the add-on comes with a 30 page fully illustrated manual), information that can for example be used as a density map in particle systems. You can even bake this information if your scene is animated. 

The future

The code in the add-on is very old (9 years, which in Internet terms is ancient) and it does show its age in the way it is structured and also, as I experience myself, it is not very fast, especially on large meshes.

I was tempted to modernize it, and improve its speed if possible, but this might also be an opportunity to add features. So if you have an idea or suggestion, please drop me a note in the contact box at the top right of the page or via BlenderMarket and I'll be happy to consider it.

Weightlifter updated for 3.6

Celebrations! 🎉

WeightLifter has been been updated for 3.6 LTS compatibility. It has been tested on Blender 3.6.2 and only minor modifications were needed to make it compatible. If you still encounter a bug, please let me know so that I can have a look at it.

The history of this add-on goes back more than 9 years(!) and this update forced me to reduce the font of the revision history section of the manual to make it fit on one page. 😊

WeightLifter is available on BlenderMarket. This update is free for customers who bought previous versions of WeightLifter.

WeightLifter is an add-on that can calculate all sorts of information and store this into vertex groups or vertex color layers. It can for example determine the visibility of vertices for a certain camera or the distance to some light source and much, much more (the add-on comes with a 30 page fully illustrated manual), information that can for example be used as a density map in particle systems. You can even bake this information if your scene is animated. 

The future

The code in the add-on is very old (9 years, which in Internet terms is ancient) and it does show its age in the way it is structured and also, as I experience myself, it is not very fast, especially on large meshes.

I was tempted to modernize it, and improve its speed if possible, but this might also be an opportunity to add features. So if you have an idea or suggestion, please drop me a note in the contact box at the top right of the page or via BlenderMarket and I'll be happy to consider it.

Weightlifter Watershed Demo

I just uploaded a new version of my WeightLifter add-on to BlenderMarket.

The video gives a short impression of the new watershed mode. You could use this watershed mode for example to calculate a realistic distribution of vegetation in large scale landscapes.

WeightLifter add-on: new features

A new version of the WeightLifter add-on (available on BlenderMarket) adds some functionality based on user feedback. Besides some bug fixes you can now:

• use an arbitrary reference axis in Height en Slope modes,
• restrict the range of calculated values interactively, and
• control the size of the patches when assigning random values to faces.

A tutorial showing this new functionality is available on YouTube:

WeightLifter add-on: new feature

I extended the WeightLifter add-on with an extra operator in the Paint menu of the vertex paint mode: VertexColorCombine. It lets you combine color channels from different vertex color layers into a combined vertex color layer.

Combining this kind of information into a single vertex color layer might save considerable space when using large meshes. A small tutorial on a possible workflow to combine different attributes calculated with WeightLifter into a single vertex color layer is available on YouTube:

WeightLifter add-on: new feature

Version 201509040905 adds a new option to the view from camera mode: a height offset. It add allows you to add weight to vertices even if they are in a valley on not directly visible from the camera. A tree for example might have a top that is visible if it is longer than the valley is deep at that point. Using this feature when populating an area with tree particles still reduces the number of particles needed but adds an extra bit of realism, especially on ridges seen side-on. This is illustrated in the image below:

In the bottom image you can see that the tiips of some trees peak above the ridge. The generated weight maps used are shown below, with the default on the left and the one with a slight height offset to the right:

The new version is of course available free of charge to people who have already purchased the add-on. Check the BlenderMarket page for more details.

WeightLifter add-on: new feature release

Version 20150501170240 adds two new modes: one that assigns values based on the average area of the faces sharing a vertex and another mode that assigns values based on the variance of the lengths of edges that share a vertex. The first one I find useful in creating materials on organic shapes that vary in a subtle but correlated manner while the latter offers a complement to the curvature mode, highlighting certain vertices in a different way. Of course you might find a completely different use for it, that's why I include it in the add-on :-)

The new version is of course available free of charge to people who have already purchased the add-on. Check the BlenderMarket page for more details.

WeightLifter in the press

Got a very positive review of my WeightLifter addon on BlenderNation. Needless to say I'm very pleased. The suggestions about a warning when there are modifiers that affect the mesh resolution and the wish to transfer weights to vertex colors and vice versa is noted too, I'll see if I can include that functionality in the future.

The addon itself is of coyrse available on BlenderMarket.

WeightLifter add-on: minor bugfix release

A new version of my commercial WeightLifter add-on is now available. Version 20150214 fixes a small bug where you would get an error in slope mode with the 3D cursor as a reference if the 3D cursor was at the center of the world.

Blender addon: visible vertices part III: bug fixes

A couple of weeks ago I presented a small addon that created a vertex group with weights that depend on the visibility of the vertex from the camera. This can be quite useful if you want to restrict particles to areas where they are actually visible, which will reduce render time and memory consumption and in a folow-up article I showed some new features. The addon was wel received but did contain a annoying bug which is fixed in this new version: vertices that were far enough behind the camera received weight as well; this is now fixed. I also disabled numerous print statements accidentally left in for debugging purposes.

Availability and usage

All functionality of this add-on plus a lot more is now available as a convenient all-in-one add-on on BlenderMarket. It comes with an extensive PDF manual and your purchase will encourage me to develop new Blender add-ons.

Version 0.0.3 of the simple add-on shown in this article is available from GitHub (right click the link to download the script somewhere then install it from Blender with File -> User Preferences -> Addons -> Install from file. Don't forget to enable the check box and don;t forget to remove any previous version from you addon directory).

Once installed it's available in weight paint mode from the Weights menu.

The addon might also be discussed in this BlenderArtists thread.

Blender Addon: Weight paint vertices visible from the active camera, part II: distance weights and more

A couple of weeks ago I presented a small addon that created a vertex group with weights that depend on the visibility of the vertex from the camera. This can be quite useful if you want to restrict particles to areas where they are actually visible, which will reduce render time and memory consumption.

The addon did take into other objects in the scene that could block the view but there was room for improvement. The first new feature in this version is that the weight of the visible vertices diminishes with the distance from the camera. For a field of grass particles you often can do with less particles at a greater distance without destroying the apparent density so this helps in cutting down the number of particles even further.

The second addition is the option to add a margin around the camera frame. Some extra particles just outside the camera view might be needed to prevent a sparse edge and to allow shadows from outside the view.

The final extra is the addition of a vertex weight edit modifier. Probably one of the lesser known modifiers, this nifty tool allows us to tweak vertex weights after the are calculated. The addon itself for example decreases the weight linearly with distance but if you want it to fall off in a different way this can be done quite easily by tweaking the curve in the modifier.

All these new options are on by default and the addon even makes sure the vertex weight modifier is visible in the properties panel just to draw some attention to it.

Example

The image below shows the generated weights falling of with the distance to the camera and with some extra margin selected:

Availability and usage

All functionality of this add-on plus a lot more is now available as a convenient all-in-one add-on on BlenderMarket. It comes with an extensive PDF manual and your purchase will encourage me to develop new Blender add-ons.

Version 0.0.2 of the simple add-on shown in this article is available from GitHub (right click the link to download the script somewhere then install it from Blender with File -> User Preferences -> Addons -> Install from file. Don't forget to enable the check box).

Once installed it's available in weight paint mode from the Weights menu.

The addon might also be discussed in this BlenderArtists thread.

Blender Addon: Weight paint vertices visible from the active camera

When working with particles it is often a waste of resources to distribute the particles outside the area visible from the camera. Fortunately the particle distribution can be controlled by a vertex group but weight painting the visible area by hand is a bit cumbersome. I therefore created a simple script that offers the option to paint the vertices of a mesh in the active vertex group with a weight of one if they are visible from the camera and zero otherwise. With a toggle switch you can select whether objects in the scene should be taken into account as well.

Availability and usage

All functionality of this add-on plus a lot more is now available as a convenient all-in-one add-on on BlenderMarket. It comes with an extensive PDF manual and your purchase will encourage me to develop new Blender add-ons.

The simple add-on presented in this article is available from GitHub (right click the link to download the script somewhere then install it from Blender with File -> User Preferences -> Addons -> Install from file. Don't forget to enable the check box).

Once installed it's available in weight paint mode from the Weights menu as shown below:

Simply select the mesh you want to paint, switch to weight paint mode and click Weights -> Visible Vertices. It will adjust the weights of the active vertex group and if the mesh hasn't got one, a new vertex group will be added. If you toggle the Full Scene option (in the VisibleVertices tab of the toolbar, you might need to press control-T to show it) objects in the scene might block the view as well as shown in the image below, where a cube and a sphere are shown in wireframe mode to reveal that blocked portions of the plane have been assigned a weight of zero.

The add-on was presented in this BlenderArtists thread.