by Makatopia·Workflow
Images © Makatopia. Used for product review; image policy.
Weights and Bones stands out in the superhive library for concentrating weight-paint mirroring, bone parenting and brush tools into a single Blender addon. The asymmetric mirroring is its centerpiece, and version 2.0 rebuilt the mirror workflow around configurable naming conventions.
Weights and Bones is a Blender addon built to streamline weight painting and rigging. Its central feature is fast weight-paint mirroring that works even when the mesh isn't perfectly symmetrical, supported by Fill Missing Weights, Fill Only Selected Vertices, Select Missing Vertices, and Smooth Weights for refining the destination group. Mirror Multiple Groups and Quick Origin Positioning round out the mirroring workflow.
Beyond weights, the toolkit adds a Bone Parenting Menu, Sequential Bone Parenting with more options, Batch Constraints, and a Brush Pie Menu with brush group presets. An optional setting can show each brush's weight and strength values directly in the pie menu.
Version 2.0 targets Blender 4.3–5.0+, while the legacy 1.x version covers Blender 3.0–4.5. The redesigned Mirror Weights Panel now works with any naming convention, and keymaps plus the new Mirror Naming Convention section sit together in the addon preferences. The addon was renamed from "Weight Paint and Bones: A Blender Toolkit".
Weights And Bones is best for blender users who work with weight painting or bone editing, including animators, 3D artists and game developers handling complex weight distributions or bone structures.
Weights And Bones is completely free to download and use.
Weights and Bones ships in two tracks: version 2.0 targets Blender 4.3 through 5.0 and later, while the legacy version 1.x covers Blender 3.0 through 4.5. The core functionality remains the same across versions. Version 2.0 was reworked after Blender 5.0's API changes broke several features, and fixing them led to new capabilities and reworked existing ones. If you're on an older Blender release, the legacy 1.x product is still available on the developer's page, so check which track matches your Blender version before downloading.
Weights and Bones installs like a standard Blender addon. Open Blender and go to Edit > Preferences, then switch to the Add-ons tab. Click the Install button at the top of the window, navigate to the downloaded addon zip file, select it, and click Install Add-on. Once enabled, its keymaps live in the addon preferences, where version 2.0 also gathers them in one place alongside the new Mirror Naming Convention section for configuring your setup. Grab the download itself from the developer's page.
Weights and Bones lets you configure how mirroring recognises left and right sides. The redesigned Mirror Weights Panel works with any naming convention, whether suffix or prefix, and supports custom identifiers, so it is no longer hardcoded to .L/.R. You set this up in the new Mirror Naming Convention section within the addon preferences. This sits alongside the addon's central feature, weight-paint mirroring that works even when the mesh isn't perfectly symmetrical, backed by tools for filling missing weights and smoothing the result.
Weights and Bones is listed as free in this catalog. Pricing and licensing can change over time, so for the current terms it's best to check the developer's page directly before you download. The addon covers both the version 2.0 release for newer Blender builds and the legacy 1.x product for older ones, and a video demonstration is available if you want a walkthrough of the features before installing.
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