Modo Symmetry

axxic3

If I make an edge slice with symmetry activated, it does not carry over to the other side. Is this possible? I have mirrored the object and I can move polygons etc in symmetry mode and it carries over. Also, is there something in Modo similar to 3ds' symmetry modifier, something not so permanent that I could switch on and off, I loved that thing. Thanks in advance!

Farfarer

Right click the mesh item in the item list, select Instance, then scale the instance -100% on the axis you want to mirror on.

peanut™

Aaah! Good one Farfarer

Once you've instanced your meshes can you collapse them ? the merge meshes option doesn't seem to work. Anything else ?

Bek

I assume you'd have to right click on the instance and change type > mesh then merge. But you'd only do that once you're finished.

peanut™

Yeah, >change type< but Modo crashes ... i could simply use mirror, but i like the idea of not playing with the middle edge.

axxic3

Got it after a few tries, didn't notice it had to be a child of the original object. How would you merge the meshes and weld the seam simultaneously? Do I need to just manually weld the verts?

I got lost for a minute while merging, I guess you gotta select both mesh items before selecting merge, I was just merging off the parent and it wasnt working. Thanks for the replies everyone.

Bek

Yeah you have to select all the mesh items you want to merge, it doesn't merge child meshes to the parent... afaik.

As for welding, easiest way would be to run mesh cleanup (bind that to a hotkey) or use any of the vertex merge tools.

peanut™

If i want to weld my meshes after symmetry, i just select every verts with my >middle mouse< button and use merge *fixed option to a ridiculously small amount and work my way up from there with stats and all. Not the fastest but i never have bad geometry and unweld forms.

But still, Modo definitively needs better weld after symmetry tools and not just 35 different ways of doing it.

axxic3

k, I was hoping modo had a quicker way of handling this, I've been using the same method as you peanut. All this could make a nice script. If I find something I'll post it here.

axxic3

So after a little googling this is what I came up with.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1615250/senemodo.zip

Seneca over at the foundry forums has a script collection that includes a quick mirror script inside "geometry creation and duplication" once it is run inside modo. Basically does everything but merge the verts. And there's another polycount thread about this issue I've found. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80572

peanut™

"k, I was hoping modo had a quicker way of handling this"

You could always use the bridge option but if your mesh is large or complex there's too much of a small gap to bridge them to my taste for precision's stake.

peanut™

aaah! this link is like pron, thank you

--> http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80572

axxic3

"aaah! this link is like pron, thank you" Of course, I revisited that thread and noticed it has a lot of good info after you said that, so thank you! I have one more question. Sometimes a polygon will not slice from edge to edge. I sometimes get it to work if I enable the Split Polygons option in edge slice mode but Im not sure if thats creating bad geo or something.

axxic3

I have another issue with modo's mirror instance tool. It was working just fine for 2 layers, then when I tried a third, the model copy was rotated oddly. Any ideas?

Bek

Select the mesh and go
edit > center to bounding box > center
edit > pivot to bounding box > center

then try the mirror again.

axxic3

I selected the mesh and the bounding box options are greyed out.

axxic3

Figured it out, needed to be in item mode, but still isnt working...