3ds max skin mirror plane issue

airsoftwarrior345

Hello, So I'm a noob self teaching myself 3ds max. I'm working on skinning my model to the bones so everything moves and looks smoothly when I animate. Heres where my issue is.

When I go to use the mirror tool so that I dont have to do my arms and legs twice, the plane is at a odd angle. My model is nice and centered on the grid, but the plane is at a angle.

So for example, I want to use the x axis mirror plane to copy from one arm to the other. But the plane is tilted, so plane offset doesnt do anything, because its always at an angle. I need to make it not want to put the plane at an angle.

I probobly did something wrong somewhere so that even though my model looks like its perfectly on the grid, something is probobly throwing it off. I just dont know what. Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Eric Chadwick

Reset Xform utility will fix this issue. Often the internal transform of the model will get all screwy, the result of various modeling steps (rotating and scaling). This tool straightens it out again.

Beware this will put a special Xform modifier on top of your stack. You should save your Skin weights, Collapse the stack, re-add a new Skin, and load your weights back on. If exporting to a game, it most likely won't like that Xform modifier on there.

People have written Maxscript tools for this, search for them on Scriptspot. But I think it's also a good idea to learn the manual way, so you know more.

airsoftwarrior345

Thanks a ton, I will try this out.

airsoftwarrior345

Ok so update. I did successfully do what you said and it did fix the problem. Theres just one issue. When I reset xform it rotates my body 90 degrees forward at a certain pivot point around waist level. (My hands feet and head all stay because they arent actually attached to the body. Which when I started I thought was a good thing, but I'm starting to have doubts). I cant rotate my torso back into place because my other body parts move with it.

Eric Chadwick

To prevent this, collapse the modifier stack before using Reset Xform. You do save old versions of your scene, right?

airsoftwarrior345

Ah ok, thanks that worked . Ya, I make tons of backups. Every time I'm learning something new like this I break everything, so backups help a lot "hey whats this button do?". Clicks it. Deletes hair and undo doesnt work... At least it was just hair.

So thanks again for the help, I really appreciate it. That time comes in self teaching where no amount of google searching will save me