[Blender] Character Weight Paint: #3 Weight Paint Workflow (beginner tutorial)

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⚠️Important updates in Weight Paint in Blender 2.91 and 2.92. I made a new video about that:
The changes in Weight Paint mode in 2.91 were a bit of a mess, so I recommend avoiding it. In 2.92 things were improved significantly.
I also did a video about "weight painting through the mesh" which many people (including myself) were confused about.

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This is part 3 in the basic weight painting series.
If you haven't seen the previous part, check them out:

In the video, I mention "Intro to blender armatures", one of my previous videos. Here it is:

Here I show my basic workflow for painting weights. With this, you should be able to weight paint most characters.

0:00 Part 3 Intro
0:17 Scene download
0:23 Scene Setup
0:30 Blender Armatures - Deforming bones VS Widgets
3:14 Create Vertex Groups (Empty Groups vs Envelope Weights vs Automatic Weights)
5:14 Weight Paint Mode (simple approach)
6:00 Weight Paint Mode (advanced approach, RECOMMENDED)
6:55 Additional Options
7:16 Auto Normalize (IMPORTANT!)
9:04 X Mirror
10:06 X Mirror VS Symmetry (IMPORTANT!)
11:17 Other settings
11:29 Beware this Undo problem :(
13:00 Weight Painting demonstration
18:43 Restrict Option
19:46 Unparent an Armature
20:55 Weight Paint for Rigify characters

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[IlijaRajicBoowho]

The end about the rigify layer saved me man. Thank you so much. For days now I couldn't figure it out

[juliocargnin]

Thanks for this amazing series. I’ve watched pretty much all your videos on this channel. The best Wiki for Rigging in Blender!

[LucasSavelli]

As always, amazing explanation! Without a doubt, you have become the number 1 when it comes to rigging in Blender! Thank you very much for your effort and dedication :) you are amazing!

[captainannaHK]

I am a beginner to blender, just used it for 2 months. After watching this video, now I understand why my mesh become so messy! I will try to correct! Thank you!

[ArtbyDiorella]

As a beginner, your series really helped me a lot! Thanks to that end part on the rigify + weight paint, saw my mistakes there! 😂 Now I know what should be done! 🙂 Thank you for existing here in youtube! 😁

[myrrhsolace]

Wow. Thank you CGDive, you disarmed a whole bunch of pit traps that I would certainly have fallen into.

[sebbykaumba]

Still following your lectures sir you are the aexcellent tutor and the pace at which you are explaining everything is explicit good work thanks.

[UjangBoyor]

Thank you for making this video. its really helpful. i finally finish the series and i learn something new. just one thing about "Smear tool" on weight painting. for me, it is extremely helpful. i use it most of the time. basically it slides certain part of weight (or vertext). i use it to rough draft (on certain part where the brush cannot reach, i dunno how to explain lol), fix the model deform before smoothen up with blur, and especially fix the part where the deform is at the armpit or biceps, or legs.
i tried the 0.1 and 0.2 method but basically im stick with smear lol.
cheers

[whynotanyting]

10:06 Now with the latest releases of Blender, it seems they removed the "X Mirror" checkbox under options and added "Mirror Vertex Groups" under symmetry which does function the same, but you still need to select which xyz direction. Which I think is great if you need symmetric weight paints from front to back or up to down.

[w]

This tutorial was extremely useful and informative, thank you very much.

[Frank_G_Finster]

This was extremely useful. I will head over to the 2.92 video right away. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge.

[seal]

Thank you so much for this mini series, it helped me understand bones and weight paints more than any other tutorial I could find :D

[EkamaiArt]

It was very good explanation and a lot of very usefull information about options such as x mirror in options box, which I didn't know. Thank you for sharing!

[Habijob]

🙏Bless your tutorial series. I watched all 3 parts before jumping into weight painting a model I am creating. I was especially hoping to find the trick how to stay in weight paint mode while being able to select bones to rotate them. So thank you very much for your tutorial series!

[Antank]

6:12 ctrl + click on a bone selects the bone to let you move it in weight paint mode like you were in pose mode. good for efficiency

[heiro]

Todor! Another excellent series of lessons. When I approached rigging over ten years ago (in Maya) this is where it fell apart for me — painting weights. A lot has changed since then, including this whole tutorial ecosystem. Thank you again for your excellent videos.

I'm using Rigify, so I appreciated you explaining how to access the deform bones for that. I can't get the deform bones to pose the model in weight painting, but posing the model in pose mode and then taking it all to weight painting is a very acceptable workflow. I suspect it may be due to changes, as I'm doing these lessons in Blender 3.3. Regardless, thanks again for giving me the knowledge to work with these systems.

[EC]

19:51 - Looked like you are going to be able to reset all of the test movements / rotations of the bones after you're done with editing the weights...I guessed it right, that's a really nice workflow with Blender since in 3ds Max for example you don't have this option of resetting the bones positions AFAIK to their initial positions so for testing and tweaking of weights purposes you must animate the bone or move it and right click to cancel the rotation of the bone so it is not as comfortable as this...this is better since it is straight forward letting you test the bones freely without any extra steps that are required like in 3ds Max.

[an_mate]

you are an amazing teacher, thanks a lot !

[atefezare]

Very informative and thorough! I very much appreciate your efforts 💞🌹

[VideoSage]

I strongly disagree with Auto Normalize.
Even in your example, you ended up taking longer to fix the "missclick."
With it off, you simply remove the weight in the wrong spot- with it on, you end up removing much of the issue with the repainting of the area, but you still end up having to touch it up. In this way, you mind as well just keep it off, therefore guaranteeing the original weight painting in the area remains, and only having to remove the added weights.