Weight Editor Preferences

Edit Mode

Controls how values entered with the slider in the weight editor are interpreted.

• Absolute Values are set to the exact value entered. This is the equivalent of Abs on the weight editor command bar.

• Additive Adds or subtracts the value entered relative to the current value. For example, enter -20 to subtract 20 from the values of all cells selected. This is the equivalent of Add on the weight editor command bar.

• Add Percentage Adds or subtract the value entered as a percentage relative to the current value. For example, enter -20 to subtract 30% from the values of all cells selected. This is the equivalent of Add % on the weight editor command bar.

Normalize

For envelope weights, automatically adjusts weight values so that they always add up to 100%. For example, suppose a point is weighted 50% to the shin and 50% to the femur. If you set the shin weight to 40%, the femur weight is automatically changed to 60% if Normalize is on.

There are two situations where you would want to turn Normalize off:

• A point is weighted to three or more deformers, and you want to set numerically exact values. After you have set the weight for the first deformer, you do not want the value to change when you set the weight for the second deformer.

• You want a "partial" envelope effect. If a point's weights do not add up to 100%, it behaves as if it is partly assigned to no deformer. Its position is a mix of the reference pose and the positions determined by its existing deformers.

When Normalize is on and you adjust a weight value, the other values are modified proportionally (that is, they are each multiplied by the same factor necessary to keep the total equal to 100). In particular, this means that if a point is already weighted 0 to deformer, its weight will not change by being normalized.

Even when Normalize is off, a point's weight assignments cannot add up to more than 100.

For vertex colors, this option shows color values as normalized values in the range [0.0, 1.0] instead of [0, 255].

For weight maps, this option has no effect.

This option is also available on the weight editor command bar.

Select Zero Cells

Allows cells with a value of 0 to be automatically selected in the weight editor whenever you select points in the 3D views. This is the opposite of Filter on the weight editor command bar.