== Constraints - Geometry Targets ==

It is now possible to use the geometry of Meshes and/or Lattices as the target of a constraint. All you need to do, is to create a new Vertex-Group and assign all the points that you wish to use as the target, then type that name into the VG: field for the relevant constraints.

One of the cases where this is beneficial is when you need to copy the location of a vertex. Now you don't need to make extra vertex-parents for that.

Additional Notes:
* The code takes the average of the locations of the nominated vertices, and puts that in world-space for constraint solving (and regular space-conversion stuff).
* Currently, rotation and scaling of points is not taken into account. The rotation/scaling used is from the object's matrix. Hopefully, this will only be a temporary problem (will be fixed soon)

1 files changed, 21 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/source/blender/blenkernel/intern/deform.c b/source/blender/blenkernel/intern/deform.c
index aa6220e88bc..9356ba14071 100644
--- a/source/blender/blenkernel/intern/deform.c
+++ b/source/blender/blenkernel/intern/deform.c
@@ -113,14 +113,31 @@ bDeformGroup *get_named_vertexgroup (Object *ob, char *name)
 	return NULL;
 }
 
-int get_defgroup_num (Object *ob, bDeformGroup	*dg)
+int get_named_vertexgroup_num (Object *ob, char *name)
+{
+	/* Return the location of the named deform group within the list of
+	 * deform groups. This function is a combination of get_defgroup_num and
+	 * get_named_vertexgroup. The other two could be called instead, but that
+	 * require looping over the vertexgroups twice.
+	 */
+	bDeformGroup *curdef;
+	int def_nr;
+	
+	for (curdef=ob->defbase.first, def_nr=0; curdef; curdef=curdef->next, def_nr++) {
+		if (!strcmp(curdef->name, name))
+			return def_nr;
+	}
+	
+	return -1;
+}
+
+int get_defgroup_num (Object *ob, bDeformGroup *dg)
 {
 	/* Fetch the location of this deform group
 	 * within the linked list of deform groups.
 	 * (this number is stored in the deform
 	 * weights of the deform verts to link them
-	 * to this deform group) deform deform
-	 * deform blah blah deform
+	 * to this deform group).
 	 */
 
 	bDeformGroup *eg;
@@ -129,8 +146,7 @@ int get_defgroup_num (Object *ob, bDeformGroup	*dg)
 	eg = ob->defbase.first;
 	def_nr = 0;
 
-	/* loop through all deform groups
-	 */
+	/* loop through all deform groups */
 	while (eg != NULL) {
 
 		/* if the current deform group is