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 updated for Blender 2.93

Old but still going strong!

WeightLifter has been been updated for 2.9x compatibility. It has been tested on Blender 2.92 and 2.93 beta and only minor modifications were needed to make it compatible. If you still encounter a bug , please let 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 more, information that can for example be used as a density map in particle systems. 

The future

The code in the add-on is very old (7 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 am 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 and I'll be happy to consider it.

WeightLifter updated for Blender 2.83 LTS

I just finalized testing of the venerable WeightLifter add-on and it's now ready for Blender 2.83 LTS.

There are no functional changes but I did catch some bugs while testing. However, if you don't encounter problems in your workflow, there is no pressing need to upgrade.

The new version is available on BlenderMarket.

New version of WeightLifter for Blender 2.80

A new version of WeightLifter (20190728) has been released on BlenderMarket.

I has some bug-fixes to keep it compatible to the latest release candidate but more importantly it sports an updated manual and a new feature to combine baked weight maps into one. This feature is useful if you use the maps as density maps in a particle instance and want to prevent frame-to-frame jittering for example. It is illustrated in this video

WeightLifter ported to Blender 2.80

WeightLifter has now been ported to Blender 2.80 and is available from BlenderMarket.
Porting this add-on was a bit more work than porting NodeSet Pro, so be aware that Blender 2.80 is still in beta and you might still encounter some difficulties!

New version of WeightLifter introduces baking and animation

A new version of WeightLifter is available on BlenderMarket.

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 more, information that can for example be used as a density map in particle systems.

New features

The newest version introduces some new modes like calculating a flow map or the mesh deformation but the most exiting new feature is the ability to bake any weight map for each frame in an animation. This way can quickly regenerate a vertex group for each frame while rendering, effectively animating a weight map, something which is not possible otherwise.

To illustrate how to do this, I have created a short video that shows the workflow for creating an animated density map that lets the proximity to a lamp drive the emission of particles.

Black Friday - Cyber Monday at Blender Market

Goods news for cost conscious Blenderheads: from november 25th - november 28th Blender Market will host the yearly Black Friday - Cyber Monday sale!

I will participate will all my products, including my new IDMapper add-on. So if you want to save 25% on WeightLifter, SpaceTree, IDMapper (video) or one of my books, head over to my shop on Blender Market this weekend. Of course many other creators will be participating as well so you might want to shop around a bit more :-)

[For Europeans: remember Blender Market runs on Chicago time, so don't start shopping too early next Friday :-) ]

Blender conference discount at Blender Market

it's becoming a tradition and it is a good one: many products on Blender Market will carry a discount of 20% during the Blender Conference [28 - 30 October].

Of course I will participate all my products so if your were thinking of getting some nice asset or add-on this might be the perfect time.

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:

Black friday / cyber monday sale

During the weekend and next monday (from 27 to 30 November) many products at BlenderMarket will come with a 25% discount. Of course I will participate in that sale as well, so if you were thinking about purchasing either WeightLifter or Space Tree Pro, now is your chance to get an even better deal :-)

Now I wouldn't want to exclude my Open Shading Language for Blender E-book from the fun so even though it is not marketed by BlenderMarket it will carry the same 25% discount during the Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend. Get it on Smashwords and enter the coupon code QP54E on checkout.

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:

Blender Conference Discount

During the 2015 Blender Conference (from 23 to 25 October) many products at BlenderMarket will come with a 20% discount. Of course I will participate in that sale as well, so if you were thinking about purchasing either WeightLifter or Space Tree Pro, now is your chance to get an even better deal :-)

Now I wouldn't want to exclude my Open Shading Language for Blender E-book from the fun so even though it is not marketed by BlenderMarket it will carry the same 20% discount during the Blender conference. Get it on Smashwords and enter the coupon code EY53W on checkout.

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.

Transfer vertex weights to vertex colors and vice versa

In a previous article I mentioned that my WeightLifter addon was updated and could now (besides many other things) transfer vertex weights to vertex colors and vice versa. Because this might be of use to many people I decided to split off this specific functionality into a separate addon and provide it for free.

After installing the addon in the usual manner you get two new menu options: one in the Weights menu in Weight Paint mode called VertexColorsToWeights and a corresponding one in the Paint menu in Vertex Paint mode.

Weight paint mode

In weight paint mode clicking on Weights -> VertexColorToWeight will transfer a color from the active vertex color layer to the active vertex group. If there is no vertex color layer present a will cretae a new one. You have an option to choose which color channel to use as weight or to combine all colors.

Vertex paint mode

In vertex paint mode clicking on Paint -> WeightToVertexColor will transfer the weights from the active vertex group to the active vertex color layer. if there is no veretx group present it will create a new one. You have again an option to transfer the weights to a single color channel or to all color channels.

Code Availability

The code can be downloaded from my GitHub repository.

WeightLifter add-on: user feedback release

Version 20150222 incorporates a lot of features based on user feedback, including an invert option, a new mode (that measures distances to selected vertices), auto update of particles systems that use a a vertex group and extra operators/menu options to transfer values between vertex groups and vertex color layers. The new version is available free of charge to people who have already purchased the add-on. Check the BlenderMarket page for more details.

Distance to selected verts

The new mode Distance to selected verts lets you for example create vertex groups that might be used to control the distribution of particle systems based on the distance to a wall:

Auto update of particle systems

If a vertex group is updated by WeightLifter it now takes care to trigger an update on any associated particle system that uses the vertex group. This way you can get immediat efeedback on the effects of your WeightLifter actions.

Transfer weights to vertex colors (and vice versa)

Sometimes it might be useful to transfer the weights of vertex group to a vertex color layer or the other way around. This might be useful in other contexts beside WeightLifter too, so this functionality is implemented as two separate operators that are available from the Weights menu in vertex weight mode and from the Paint menu in vertex color mode. There are installed automatically with WeightLifter/