maya instanced Mirror

sha

Hello,

I'm trying to kitbash a model with some already modeled components in maya, the way I do it is having one side let's say +x with separate objects grouped together which is my main working group. this group is then instanced on the other side -x so i can see it and work in symmetry.

the problem is, if I add an object or duplicate one already inside the work group +x I then have to delete the mirrored side and reinstance again because the changes dont propagate on that side.

its kinda killing my workflow having to do this all the time I was wondering if there was a method or a script that allows me to just work on one side and have the other updated automatically?

thanks a lot for any help in advance!

jfitch

I'm confused, are you doing an instanced mirror of your groups? That won't work, I think it has to be individual objects. Duplicate special will do what you're looking for, just make sure you use instance instead of new object or whatever it is.

Also there's nothing for bringing in a new object and automatically having it mirror, you'd have to set it up yourself either way. I would personally use Zbrush, as it has nice mirroring tools for that.

sha

hey thanks @jfitch!

yes I have a main group which contains all the objects that make up one side. then I instance that with a duplicate special with -1 to have its mirror.

so inside the main uninstanced group would be nice to have a way to duplicate an object and have it reflected on the instance automatically, if this makes more sense!

throttlekitty

I'm certain there's scripts for this, but i just ate a big meal. It's kind of a pain to do manually, but the trick is to use expressions on the translations you want inverted.

br0br0br0

Sounds really similar to the way I work. I wrote something a while back to speed things up a bit.

It's a really basic script that I have on a shelf button. When first run, it creates two instance groups, one with a -1 scale value on the axis of your choice. When it's run with objects selected, it'll add them to the groups without merging, so each objects transform's are preserved. However if you duplicate an object that's already in the groups it won't propagate to the other, I normally unparent the duplicate object from the group and then just rerun the script on it.

It's far from perfect, but it might speed up your workflow. I'll dig it out for you tomorrow and post it here. (btw what version of maya are you using?)

sha

Hey thanks a lot, br0 and throttlekitty!

yes that's might help br0 usually I just delete the entire instanced group and remirror it. still I find myself doing it so often in some projects and I thought maybe by now there is a better way of doing it. of course maya has to lack on the most basic things. i'm on 2015.

I was thinking of looking into modo maybe that has a decent way of working with symmetry?

br0br0br0

Sorry it took me so long, made a few changes to make it easier to install. I've only tested this on maya 2011, so uncertain if it'll work on anything else.

SmartMirror-v0.5

Setup instructions are in the SmartMirror.mel, just open it up in notepad to read.

How to Use:
Right click SMir button to select mirror axis
After selecting objects, click SMir button to add to mirror group
Select both mirror groups and click SMir button to merge all objects within the group

Let me know if you have any trouble.