How to mirror poses in maya?

Commodore

Hello, so I've just started rigging my model and was wondering when it came to animating, what I would have to do to mirror all the poses? My rig is going to be fully symmetrical and I'm going to have names like left_shoulder, right_shoulder etc.

Is there an easy way to mirror poses or will I have to either manually change the values to negative and positive, or use mel scripting (I've never used mel before)

Thanks

Denny

There are some ways to do it but none is a shortcut.

* Create your rig with mirrored behavior and make a MEL script that copies keyframes from both sides. For the central controllers you'll have to do some math to flip the rotations.

* Same with a non-mirrored behavior, but you have to define how each controller is mirrored based on the opposite side.

I don't think you'll get away without using MEL here.

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An alternative is to use one of the few mirroring scripts out there. I made one myself that is very close to automatic, you can check it out at one of the links below. If you get stuck feel free to drop me a note.

http://dennylindberg.com/downloads/character-mirrortable-utility/

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/animation/c/denny-s-character-mirrortable-utility

melviso

Try using Maya bonus tools,there is a mirror animation tool in the animation section.

Commodore

Denny wrote: »

There are some ways to do it but none is a shortcut.

* Create your rig with mirrored behavior and make a MEL script that copies keyframes from both sides. For the central controllers you'll have to do some math to flip the rotations.

* Same with a non-mirrored behavior, but you have to define how each controller is mirrored based on the opposite side.

I don't think you'll get away without using MEL here.

---

An alternative is to use one of the few mirroring scripts out there. I made one myself that is very close to automatic, you can check it out at one of the links below. If you get stuck feel free to drop me a note.

http://dennylindberg.com/downloads/character-mirrortable-utility/

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/animation/c/denny-s-character-mirrortable-utility

Please excuse my extreme noobiness, but I can't seem to install your script. It says to put it under: C:\Users\MainUser\Documents\maya\version#\scripts

What do I put for the version number, 2011?

Thanks for your help, I'm really excited to try your script.


@Melviso, Do you have a link? I tried looking for it and couldn't find anything.

Thanks guys

Pola

Are you sure you tried looking I just googled maya bonus tools and it was the first result. If you go to the page scroll down and click the version right for your maya it'll take you to a page and ask you to register, after done that sign in and download. If the latest version doesn't work you just need to change the url a bit, if your using maya 64-bit this would be the correct link:
http://area.autodesk.com/downloads/plugins/bonus_tools_for_maya_2011_win64

For the script, how are you having difficulty finding that location? Go to my documents, go into the maya folder, there should be a folder with 2011 on it and inside there is a scripts folder place the script inside there.

Flynny

Ive never had any luck with mirroring scripts mostly because the rigs I deal with haven't had much love, but a quick guide usually helps so il duplicate the mesh/character without the rig, merge it all together as one mesh, then mirror.
Il do this for all my extreme poses and begin adjusting the rig to match up..

Not ideal I know but ive found the amount of time I waste trying to get scripts and features working when I can just force it out usually doesn't pay off..

Denny

Commodore >> You can put it directly under Users\MainUser\Documents\maya\scripts without the version number instead, this will make it available for all Maya versions. I probably should have typed that in the install instructions.

After that all you do is run mt_MirrorTable inside Maya.