Maya - mirror symmetrical

Sinking

I'm struggling with the mirror function in Maya, as I cannot figure out how to do something that was easy in XSI. In XSI I could "mirror symmetrical" and it would mirror the object across the central grid. In Maya the objects are mirrored right next to each other (without the distance)


this is what I want to mirror to the other side:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10191409/mirror_symmetrical_er.JPG

It doesn't work, so I moved the pivot and snapped it to the center grid. However, Maya will still place those objects next to each other; even when I freeze translations with the moved pivot:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10191409/mirror_symmetrical.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10191409/mirror_symetrical.JPG

So my question is - how do I mirror across the central axis and not right next to the object?

Of course I could split my mesh in half and make a duplicate with the object. However, I have come across this problem several times now and think there must be a better way than this workaround. Also: Happy New Year, yeah!

Bartalon

Mesh > Mirror Geometry works locally, regardless of it's position in world space. If you are mirroring it -Z, it will use the most-negative point of itself along Z as the mirroring point, not the location of the pivot point.

If you want to mirror based on the location of your pivot point, you can use Edit > Duplicate Special and set your axis scale to -1. If you don't need an instance, you can quickly mirror a mesh by pressing Shift + D then setting the axis scale opposite of whatever it is (recommend just freezing transforms beforehand). Note that these two methods will not weld vertices so you will need to do that afterward to ensure your model is air tight.

Froyok

Note also that using the inverted scale axis trick will also invert your normals if you freeze the transformations after, unless you combine them with something else before (like both sides of your geometry together).

Sinking

Seems like "Duplicate Special" is what I am looking for, since it is easy to just move and snap the pivot point around in Maya. I already noticed that Maya can cause errors when I duplicate and mirror without freezing. I had situations where I couldn't undo the last steps and ended up with a geometry mess. However, I usually save before making transforms like these anyway.

Maya has all the functionality I need, it is just sometimes hard to find. However, I have fewer questions every day and Polycount forums did a great deal of helping me with this. Thanks guys!