Cineversity

Hello,
I’m trying to mirror weight for a single, centered joint from one side of a symmetrical mesh to the other.

I’m using the command button ‘Mirror + to -’ in the Weight Manager, which works great with joints that use ‘L_’ and ‘R_’ prefixes, but doesn’t currently work at all with my middle joint (settings images attached).

* All of my joints’ influences are unlocked.
* No components (points, edges, or faces) are selected.
* I have tried with Auto Normalize on and off

Could you please advise me on how to mirror this single joint’s weights? Thank you!

Hi blastframe,

Thanks for the images, but it never really replaces a scene file. (Sorry that I already sound like a broken record.)

Here is a little screen capture:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/sLycVR52iB0HU9xUr10DEILucl48LCNcCq3s1zFRsJI

Since I have no file, you have to make sure the center line of vertices have the right weight.

All the best

Dr. Sassi - 08 April 2019 05:53 AM

Since I have no file, you have to make sure the center line of vertices have the right weight.

Thank you, Dr. Sassi for the video

I was using the method from your video, but I have a question about your above comment. What is the best way for cases where the center line of the mesh does not have 100% weight from the influence? By merging the copied weights, it doubles the weight of the center line vertices.

I have attached a scene file.

UPDATE: I just hit the Normalize button and it seemed to bring the middle weights down to where they were before the Merge.

Another question I have is why does the “Mirror + To -” button only work sometimes on single centered joints?

Hi blastframe,

To my knowledge, the standard mirror function, from one side to another, depends on an actual joint which can receive the information.

What I did in the clip is my idea of how it could be done without any symmetrical joint available. I hope I have given a little alert with my seam hint.

Yes, the middle seam is tricky, as it might share this value with others. I do not have a general answer, other than, to move a character successfully; each point needs to have 100%. There is indeed a lot going on, and it is an artist’s call to weight this manually for a single joint “mirror”. Of course, I might miss a technique, hence why I even googled this problem, with very little success. I haven’t seen it discussed here either.

My interest would be, why not have the symmetrical painting on in the first place? Is that a fair question?

Character animation is from my point of view the major discipline when it comes to animation, and I think the reasons are more than obvious.

Enjoy