www.si-community.com

Hi guys,
I have searched this forum but could not find anything that would answer my question which has to do with symmetry. Is it possible to apply a symmetry mapping template to a rig (human) before positioning it properly to be enveloped and then removing the symmetry just before applying the envelope operator? This way I could pose fewer limbs (arms, fingers and feet) and avoid repetition from left side and right side (or vice versa). Or maybe there is another time-saving tool to accomplish this?

thanks

Hi Wayne,

haven't seen a mirror pose tool yet that works for all kinds of rigs, only some for somebody's custom rig. Probably it's not easy to write an automatic one, it would have to figure out all sorts of dependencies in the rig and then set everything in the right order.

What I did for simple rig once (fk only) was delete the right side and use "duplicate symmetry" to recreate it from the left. This could even be reconnected to an existing envelope operator. But not sure how much this would apply to your rig.

Long time ago it was a tutorial about editing the SI Symmetry Mapping Template in Excel or (maybe) another app with tables, basically it was a selecting everything in SI editor, copy-paste in Excel, going back in same way.
As far as I know, SI Symmetry mapping template is generated from positions of deformers, so, to get the generator to work properly 1:1, each deformer on particular side has to be on slightly different position. While yeah, to get that, one should use nulls instead of bones, as envelope carriers, otherwise there are root-first bone conflicts and such. Anyway, once the 'never two or more deformers at same position' rule is followed, life should be easier. In other apps like Maya too, also that makes easier to build some ICE or Houdini setup on top of deformers set.

@rray
Thanks. I was using one of the rigs that is available in SI. I was hoping that someone already built a tool that would handle one of those rigs, I could possibly try it.

@Mathaeus
Thanks. I guess I'll simply appreciate the 'task' of posing each side of the rig to match the character.

Thanks guys for the community and the tips.

LLXSI