Replace Sculpting Masks and Face Sets with Weight Paint
Never realy came around with face sets and the masking system. It is not intuitive, you can not really see the alpha of masks and functionsalities are unnecessary seperated within the Menu under Mask, Face Sets.
Why not just using the Weight Paint System as well?
- One brush to define the Weight Paint
- The brush can be done with different Strokes (Elipse, Rectangle, Line, Poly Line, Curve, Textures) open and closed.
- Setting sharpness/smoothness for the strokes.
- Add/Substract by holding CTRL/Shift
- Using them in a Layer System or Just let them be saved to recall. Multi recall should be possible as well. Maybe selecting saved WPaints in a list.
- An option to toggle the Weight Paint visibillity to better see what you are sculpting/modify on that area.
- The Wight Paint area should be the part you wanna modifiy not like by masks where you always invert.
Quite every Brush could benefit of this system especially the Pose Prush and the Transformation Burushes analouge to the rigging system
Doing this way you could get rid of all the mask and facet brushes. More flexebility, better understanding, usage for the user and less maintainig for the devs.
P.S. This kind of brush could be used in Weight Painting in general.
10 Comments
AFAIK the current masks work exactly like weight painting: assigning a float 0-1 value to vertices. Fasesets are a completely different feature that can't be mimicked with weights.
Removing both in favor of weights sounds more like a regression, I don't see where you call that "more flexibility".
Thats the point while masks work quite like weights the devs could use the weight paint system insteat they had reinvented the wheel new. As told the problem with masks is that you can't see the alpha very well and dont know exactly what your modifying while you would do with weight paintings! With wight paint you could work a lot more precisely.
Not sure if you understand Face Sets very well. They are a mechanism to group and reuse areas of your model/mesh for further procedures. Thats why I explained...
if we have the ability to save masks(or weight paints then)as a layer or list to reuse them. Face Sets would became obsolete and on top reduce unnecessary menu options and burshes, would be more intuitve compared to other software and the devs would have less maintanance work.
Please don't start ad hominem argumentation.
That's ignoring that masks are a quick and dynamic tool, while vertex groups are permanent and more cumbersome to handle. Also, Blender didn't invent masking, no wheels were re-invented here.
If the only thing that bothers you with sculpt mask is visibility, that's not a functionality issue, but a GUI issue.
Have you tried changing the mask overlay opacity?
It gets pretty hard not to see. But if you want even more options for the overlay, like changing the color or even being able to set a gradient, maybe you should propose that instead.
People have requested such things:
I bet there are addons that do that already. Yet some people still prefer using masks or face sets regardless.
No, because Face sets are face-based, while masks and vertex groups are vertex based. Also, Face sets have a speed and dynamism of use that regular vertex groups don't have (or even face groups if they existed).
All those tools offer different experiences and ways to do things. They are not unnecessary. When you propose to merge them into one tool, that doesn't give "more flexibility" as you mention. It wouldn't even necessarily turn into a more intuitive tool, since it would now need to cater so many different needs.
"Please don't start ad hominem argumentation. "
It was not my intention to abuse you, sorry if I did. It's always the balance between wording/language and touchiness.
"That's ignoring that masks are a quick and dynamic tool, while vertex groups are permanent and more cumbersome to handle. Also, Blender didn't invent masking, no wheels were re-invented here."
Nope... as you descriped by yourself weights work just the same like masks. Using an optimized vertx group mechanism as a layer system then Blender could have used stuff they still had all the time. Implementing stuff here "masks" insteat using stuff you still can (re)use means re-inventing stuff, right? I didn't say Blender re-invented the generel concept of masks. I do agree the current state of vertex groups are a bit cumbersome thats where my proposal comes into play ;)
"If the only thing that bothers you with sculpt mask is visibility..."
No it's just one benefit. But I would repeat myself as everything described previously.
Short: It's more of reuse common usages and reduce/combine tooling.
The overly for masks as you showed do not really bring the same effect as you even agreed: "It gets pretty hard not to see..."
The links you posted are also nice ideas but all are more or less sub features or included of my proposal.
"No, because Face sets are face-based..."
And what is the benefit... I don't see any gab of speed and dynamism to my propasal. Can you please clearify with an example?
"All those tools offer different experiences and ways to do things"
Sorry this is vague. I do agree with "different ways to do things" but are they necessary to accomplish the same reusult? I don't think so and maybe this is our mismatch. But maybe you can enlighten me with concrete examples what you can do better with the current face sets and masks compared to my proposal.
Nothing is necessary if we have to defend features to that level. If you don't see the differences of UX of these tools, nor even why face vs vertex matters, I don't believe I am that good to illustrate them further by text, and there are people who definitely can demonstrate those tools way better than me and live. So perhaps it would be way more efficient to go out and look how people work with them, why they use X or Y tool and how. IMHO any time you want to see what a tool can do, the best thing is to look people push them to their limits and beyond, and we do have some sculpting wizards on Blender.
Much like real-matter sculptors rarely have just a single hammer and a single chisel. Even though would be simpler for tool maintenance. And they do crazy different things with the different similar-ish tools.
But as a general concept, I will sum it up to this: it's not because you might not see the nuances and advantages in different tools that they don't exist or aren't a good thing to have, even only for some people sometimes. And it's fine, and there shouldn't be a need to remove them for the sake of having one tool that poorly does "kind of the same" without the advantages of the many-tools bring to the table.
The features you're mentioning are already available as part of masking. I don't see any reason to replace masks and face sets.
It might be nice to have an optional 3DCoat-like rainbow display for masks to better see transparency. It would also be nice to toggle mask visibility and save masking as sets. Those are the only improvements I can identify here though. The masked area being the part you want to modify is personal preference and not consistent with industry standards. When you "mask" something, you're masking it off so it isn't disrupted. Hence the name.
I might be more helpful to identify where masking isn't intuitive. What's proposed here doesn't seem any more intuitive than the existing masking functionality. Listing some features that could be added to the existing masking functionality to improve it would be welcome as well, rather than proposing that it be replaced altogether.
I would repeat myself. But for short: The most benefit is reduce/combine the tooling and use a common system here weight paint for different but analogue tasks. On top of that for side effects visibillity, organisation.
Ask yourself why do you need face sets what do you can accomplish with them what you couldnt do with masks itself (if you can save, reuse and combine them)? And masks are quite the same like weight paint. Every "unnecessary" tool is a burden for a system . For the user to learn, for the interface to organize, as well for the devs to develop and maintain in context of Blender.
"The masked area being the part..."
Aggree it's personal preference... Not agree it's industry standard. In a lot of apps you find the one or/and the other approach. Maybe an option within the config could be flagged. So the user can decide.
"...any more intuitive than the existing masking functionality..." Not in general.
As Lauloque mentioned Face Sets are absolute, while masks have transparency. They are sets, so you can have different ones active across a single mesh unlike masks. There's a lot of selection-specific functions to them that are useful and there's a reason both masks/face sets exist together in comparable packages like ZBrush.
For the masked area: It's easy enough to invert and I don't believe the opposite exists in "a lot of apps". Maybe a few, but Blender adheres to the most commonly used.
Not convinced by the arguments for intuitiveness either, sorry. I get the feeling an idea is being defended here regardless of whether it's a well-informed one. I appreciate the desire to streamline Blender, but this ain't it. Face sets and masking aren't going anywhere. As I mentioned you'd probably find better luck proposing additional features to the existing tools.
Lol what
Pls, read the comment. Im sure you didn't get the point. Would be a big benefit for user and devs as well.