Cineversity

What if I want to mirror the weight that’s on the spine.  How do i mirror from one side of geometry to the other?

Hi Lyangma,

I fear that I can’t follow here, based on the content of the tutorial, isn’t the spine the central part? Would one not select all, instead of half following this tutorial. Do you have a creature with several, or do I miss here completely a standard?

Would you mind to fill in some more details, e.g., a scene file or a sketch?

Not the theme of this tutorial: The Character>Mirror Tool is doing that normally.

All the best

In Maya you can select your geometry and mirror painted weights on the XY plane from xy+ to xy- side.  It mirrors the spine, head, weights.

It’s easy selecting joints and mirroring weights(copy & replace) but I can’t quite figure out how to mirror what I painted on one side of the body to the otherside.  I made the mistake of painting with mirror turned off.  Can I mirror vertex weight by selection?

It’s easy to mirror arms and legs from left to right.  But what about the body?  What if you painted just one side of the body without turning on mirror weights on the weight tool?

I had the copy and the flip (axis) command (Weight-Manger) in mind, but if I did this - I got no normalized values back, Bret explains the steps needed to get this fixed here:
http://www.cineversity.com/vidplaytut/siggraph_2015_rewind_bret_bays_weighting_workflows_for_cinema_4d_character
… around minute 26, but you might go one time through the whole presentation, it is certainly worth it.

If I’m not mistaken, this can be also done with the VAMP Tool. I have to search a little bit deeper, so far I haven’t found a tutorial that discusses this, but in my memory I think there was one. However:

This tutorial was about using selections and fill in weights, and mirroring those. Your question goes in a different direction.  Hence my question why would you go through the effort and select only half, when the Loop-Selection is so fast to do it at once. As you wrote - if one forgot to set it up in the first place. There I guess comes the VAMP tool into the “game”.

So, my understanding is that you select for the spine the parts relevant to it from the start, as one did for a leg.

Normally you would set the weighting directly to Symmetry.

Reference> CINEMA 4D> CINEMA 4D Prime> Character Menu Weight>>Symmetry
…
New in R13, when using the Name mode, if objects can’t be matched by their names, then the symmetry will occur on the selected joint itself (for example, on a spine joint). It makes it easier to work within the same mode, instead of having to switch to Single mode whenever you need to weight in symmetry on the same joint.
…

The question you ask is more about symmetrical weighting, not based on Geometry selection. Perhaps Bret will fill in some more useful details.

P.S.: As I like to check out things each version newly and especially after I have listen to Bret’s presentation again (If in doubt, Bret is right! Seriously.), I have put a short one minute clip together. Please explore the options with and without selecting, as Bret demonstrated it in the short time after minute 26.

Please check everything first on a copy, as I have not at all any idea about your scene nor any parts of it.

In the first half I set up the scene, hence the fast forward “style”, then I delete half of the weight, set it to absolute 0%, to simulate the missing other half, after that I copy, flip, and then merge. Note that anything that was selected (points) will be copied. The merge adds values! It might need some “rounds” to get used to it. I like small set ups and do such things until they are savvy. I do not recommend to start with complex characters directly.

My best results are given if I select what I like to mirror, then zero out the area and the area where I like to have it mirrored, replace, flip, merge.

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/EHTV0V8hFVBmYYJZu0U2BE5hmaf4kyRzvIwoxl14Pjw?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

And with cleaning up the target area and how to get only a certain part of the weight into the mix:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/ikx8Fx2xlRapzWjRCFG5UfHzS0l5yLNmibkYMB18XFf?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

I edit it too fast, if you download, you will see that both sides at 0:35sec are weighted, please download it.

Refreshing the set up by disable/enable the Skin might help.

Again, perhaps I miss something, but why not using the Mirror Tool?

My best wishes for the project