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[edit] 2.40 Release

[edit] WEIGHTPAINTING

 - The "Skinnable" option for Bones now is taken into account for the
   Envelope drawmode. If not Skinnable, it also doesn't draw the soft
   deform area. Maybe bone should be hidden... dunno yet.
 - Use CTRL+LMB in weightpaint mode to sample the weight in a mesh.
   Note; it returns the weight of the closest visible vertex, not of a
   Blended result.
 - NKey Panel for Mesh edit now shows a menu with the VertexGroup name(s)
   of a selected Vertex, plus the Weight.

[edit] WeightPaint mode

 A nice character modeling time-saver:
 
 In WeightPaint mode, pose-mode armatures now allow selecting Bones, but
 without making the Armature object active.
 Selecting a Bone then results in selecting the associated vertexgroup. :)
 
 Little quirk; all armatures with posemode then draw selectable...

 New! When weight-painting a Mesh, and select a Bone, you can use transform
 options on the Bone (G, R, S). The manipulator doesn't show btw.
 Is usful to get immediate feedback on how painted weights behave with Bones.
 
 Weight Paint & Vertex Paint goodies;
 
 - New: "Spray" is an option now. This used to be the only available vertex
   painting method, while holding the mousebutton and move mouse, it keeps
   applying (adding, blending) the color.
   Disabling "Spray" will give more a 'paint' effect, only applying the
   maximum what you indicated to be painting.
 
 - Weight Paint now offers all options Vertex Paint has. This includes "Add",
   "Mult", "Sub", and "Filter". And of course the "Spray", which is default
   off btw.
   Since Weight Paint might need totally different settings, they are stored
   separate from Vertex Paint options.
 
 - Renamed the weird "Area" and "Soft" options into something that tells what
   it actually does (Even tooltips were wrong).
   Area -> "All Faces", option to have all Faces inside the brush being
      painted on. Disabling this only paints on the face under the cursor.
   Soft -> "Vertex Dist", option that uses distances from cursor to vertex
      to calculate the effect. Disable it to only paint per-face.
   If someone knows better names... go ahead! :)
 
 - New WeightPaint option in the Panel: "Clear", which removes reference
   to this deform group from all vertices.
 
 - Removed code that deleted 'deform vertices' from Mesh on exit editmode,
   when vertexgroups were empty. This just worked against you... you could
   not paint on empty groups.
 
 - Made Weight Paint painting much nicer. The way it applied values was very
   harsh without good transitions. Mainly because it didn't use the
   "Vertex Dist" option, but also because it applied colors 3 or 4 times per
   vertex (tria/quad).
 
 - Weight Paint undo now restores on a 2nd Undo.
 
 - Vertex Paint Panel button "Clear" didn't work even.

[edit] More weightpaint 2

 Made weight-painting more bearable :)
 
 - Hotkey CTRL+TAB toggles weightpaint on/off
 - If Mesh has no vertex groups yet, it still accepts Weight Paint mode.
   Then, on a first painting stroke it creates a default group.
 - When combining WeightPaint mode with Bone selecting, if you select a
   Bone without vertex group it draws Mesh dark blue. On a first painting
   stroke it then also creates a new group, with the Bone name.

 Much wanted; Constraint "move up" and "move down" buttons, in the Panel!

 Three little feats;
 
 - Vpaint and Wpaint now use our own custom cursor, this was a very old
   plan anyway. It uses the 'knife' now, we need a good brush icon for it!
 - On scaling bones in editmode, the deform distance info gets scaled now
   too when no "Envelope" draw mode was set.
 - Disabled front buffer drawing of objects with CTRL+select in Edit Mode.
   Uses a regular redraw now (like for select in Object Mode btw)

 Another painful editing issue solved!

[edit] WeightPaint use shaded mode

 Made WeightPaint use shaded mode. This thanks to the preparations as done
 by daniel before. :)
 Note; the shaded display uses smooth normals by default, because thats how
 the derived mesh works!
 
 Daniel; I've changed the G_WEIGHTPAINT hack in derivedmesh code... no idea
 how this could work even. Still ugly though.

[edit] X-axis weightpainting

 New: X-axis mirror weightpainting.
 
 - Set the button in Paint Panel, Edit buttons context
 - It assumes the mesh to be near-perfectly mirrored. Current threshold is
   set to 0.0001 (maximum difference allowed).
   In order to evaluate proper mirroring, a new option will be added in
   Mesh editmode later.
 - When the flipped group doesn't exist yet, it creates the group
 - Of course this doesn't work for mirror modifier!

[edit] Yet more weightpaint goodness

 Another useful tool for efficient usage of WeightPaint:
 
 Press SHIFT+LMB, and it shows a menu with all Vertex Groups the vertices of
 the indicated face has, also allowing selection of Groups.

 Four mirrored Weight Paint improvement/fixes:
 
 - If the mirrored group doesn't exist yet, it creates that group now.
 - Painting on any non-mirror group (not a name complying mirror rules), it
   will now paint mirrored on the group itself.
 - The Mesh octree for mirror painting was not created on loading a file
   in WeightPaint mode, or on exiting Editmode for Mesh. This caused mirror
   painting to not work always.
 - Tweaked the threshold calculation for vertices, so it gives fewer misses.

[edit] ARMATURE DEFORMATION

[edit] New Armature deform options

 Control over Armature deform. Three new options are added for it;
 
 Armature Panel
 - "Vertex Groups"
 - "Envelope"
 
 Bones Panel
 - "Mult"
 
 The logic works as follows;
 - Set "Vertex Groups" will enable vertex group based deform (default)
 - Set "Envelope" will enable Bone Envelopes to deform
 - Set both will apply Envelope deform on vertices without VertexGroups
 
 - Set the per-Bone "Mult" option to have Envelopes work on top of a
   VertexGroup
 - The per-Bone "Deform" option (was called "Skinnable") will dis/enable
   the Bone to deform for all situations.
 
 The old convention was that, without any vertex groups, the Bones deformed
 with bone-distances. I can't patch that... so you have to enable it by
 hand in older files. Not too bad, since this option was unusable before
 anyway. :)

[edit] Armature deform control

 Another option for more Armature deform control;
 
 The "Use VGroup" or "Use Envelope" options now are in Modifier Panel
 for Armature deform.
 If Modifiers are in use, they override the Armature settings for it.
 (Cannot get rid of the Armature panel options yet, since Blender still
 allows parenting to be deforming too, which is displayed as a Virtual
 modifier now)
 
 This now allows to - for example - make a Envelope deform on a Lattice,
 and have same Armature use vertexgroups on Mesh.
 

[edit] Lattice and Curve deform vertex groups

 Curve and Lattice deform Modifiers now accept optional Vertex Group name
 to finetune deform further as well.
 Note that curve deform requires object buttons 'track' and 'up' axes set
 properly. Curve deform can twist/flip a lot, making Vertex Group based
 deform hard to set up.

[edit] RVKS work for Curve objects

 RVK (relative vertex keys) work for Curve objects.

[edit] Hook supports vertex groups

 New!
 Hooks now support vertex groups. With weight painting it looks very
 interesting. Almost z-painting! :) Try a sphere with all vertices in a
 group, hook it, and scale empty in object mode a bit.

 Works as follows now; in Mesh editmode, when no vertices are selected, it
 tries to assign on CTRL+H command the active Vertex Group. (Menu is getting
 to long now... need to think over). Only works when vertices are assigned
 to a Vertex Group, this to calculate the Hook center.