(FREE) Gp Select : Grease Pencil 3 weight painting and selection helper

Hello there :3 i made a tiny little add on the help get around some selection issues i've been having with grease pencil. So i thought i'd share it with everyone. This is actually my first add on ever lol, And i'm slowly learning more python. It's Here for Free , but if ya wanted to drop me a $5 er i wouldn't say nooo ╰(￣ω￣ｏ)

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The idea behind this add on is that you just select the stroke you want, and perform the action you need. Rigging, Selection and reordering, Visibility and locking. "Switch to Layer" Will be the most useful operator.

Explanation of what this even does 😆 :

( Note : The way most of these operators work is by finding the stroke's material. So just keep that in mind if you have any Unexpected behavior. In might be because you have a stroke selected that has the same material. or maybe a layer is hidden that still has a selected stroke. I added some things to help with that but this is a greasepencil issue i can't solve for now.)

1) Weight Selected: Brings the selected Strokes into weight paint mode and isolates it from others strokes that have different materials , and are on different Layers. It also selects the armature object your gp is parented to so you can select bones to switch vertex groups. Also remember , even though there is no tool ui on the side for the armature tools , you can still move the bones in weight paint mode with the hotkeys. So i suggest you add "clear transform" in the armature to a hot key. ( Note: this only works if you have your grease pencil parented to a armure object. Vertex weight is added automatically to the greasepencil when you paint. Even if you just created a new bone. when you selected that bone and paint the vertex group will be added. so you should always just parent your gp to a armature, no matter what stage of the drawing you are in.)

Also this operator works the best when your strokes have different materials . It will still work regardless , but the way it works is by locking layers and materials for you.

2) Switch to Layer: Similar to "Set as active Material" Switch to layer" Does just that. It's based on what ever stroke you have selected. It will set the active layer of the stroke you have selected , to the active layer.

3) Move to Top and Bottom: This will move the layer of the selected stroke to the top of the stack or the bottom. ( Note this doesn't work with layers inside groups and vice versa.)

4) Move above layer: Will move the Layer Of The Selected Stroke over the Active Layer. Examples of use: You can use Switch to layer to go to a specific layer. Then select a new stroke and move that stroke's layer above the one you are on. ( Note this doesn't work with layers inside groups and vice versa.)

5) Hide Selected layers: Hides the layers of the selected stroke. (This Has some issues i can't figure out but some times it will hide a layer of a stroke that isn't selected, and i can't figure out why yet 😅Sorry lol. )

6) Isolate selected: This has the same effect as " Auto lock in-active layers" except it's Material based.

7) Unlock all : Unlocks all layers and materials

Auto rigging

I added some experimental functions that do work but it wasn't weren't to be a part of this work flow.

1) Make Layers From Groups: This looks at all the current vertex groups and makes layers of the same names.

2) Assign Weight From Groups: This requires you to have a stroke selected. This will give the stroke full weight based on it's layers name. For Example. You have a Layer called Arm.L . Copy the layer name , then go to a bone you want that stroke parented to , and rename the bone to the name as that layer. This will automatically change the vertex group to be the same ( if the group exist). Select the stroke and press the button. The operator will assign weight to the stroke because it's layer has the same name as of the vertex group. (so you can uses these two functions together,

This is very useful if you already have saved rigs like i do. You can just use it on the go with your GP already parented. OR you can use Make Layers From Groups. Make the bones and then parent the Grease pencil to the armature. It works by finding the vertex names , then creating new layers from those vertex groups.

Well that's it. i hope this helps you in your Greasepencil work flow

You can Find me on bluesky : https://bsky.app/profile/hissatsuclaw.bsky.social

Disclosure: i'm a beginner so used Google search ▲i to fix alot of my crappy code 😅lol. But i used the tutorial "Blender Python scripting: Creating custom operators from scratch" From : Cg Python . To help me make this. If that bothers you i'm sorry 😔 . i will stop using it. i'm not pro ▲i .