Need help with mirror bones plugin

[jason1025]

I folks

 

I could sure use your help. I am using carolines tutorial on the tsm 2 rig. Its great. But I am stumped at the mirror bones part. I have read the documentation by sgross and carolines info but its just not working right. Any thoughts. Could some one do a quick tut.

 

[jason1025]

Anybody?

[itsjustme]

If you're using TSM2, use the "Flipper" to copy the bones.

[jason1025]

If you're using TSM2, use the "Flipper" to copy the bones.

 

 

 

The flipper copies the main bones but not the fans

[itsjustme]

If you're using TSM2, use the "Flipper" to copy the bones.

 

 

 

The flipper copies the main bones but not the fans

 

Here's a quick example video showing how to mirror a fan bone with the MirrorBones plugin. Hope that helps, Jason.

mirror_bone_example_vid.mov

[jason1025]

Hi David

 

 

You are to generous. Thank you for making that tutorial. I am still very confused. If you hang out for about 15 minutes a will make a video illustrating my problem. I know you and Rob are experts when it comes to Rigs.

[itsjustme]

Hi David

 

 

You are to generous. Thank you for making that tutorial. I am still very confused. If you hang out for about 15 minutes a will make a video illustrating my problem. I know you and Rob are experts when it comes to Rigs.

 

I'll stay logged in and keep checking.

[itsjustme]

I'll assume you've figured it out...probably check back later to be sure.

[jason1025]

I'll assume you've figured it out...probably check back later to be sure.

 

 

Thanks for checking back. I dont know is I got it working, I came across so many issues. It will take me time to sort things out

[robcat2075]

Quick note about TSM bones... the upper and lower arm and leg groups can't be bent.

 

 

 

Use the rotate, scale and translate manipulators on the top bone of each 2- bone group to crane the branch into place.

 

 

 

The flipper copies the main bones but not the fans

 

Flipper will flip bones that have a "right" in their name. If your fans don't have that it will bypass them. This gives some minimal control over what gets duplicated.

[jason1025]

Hi Rob

 

Thanks for that valuable info. Much appreciated as always.

 

I have a few questions for you.

 

1. I kind of got mirror bones working but I had to deviate from Carolines settings and Un check "search for name only using bone name" Otherwise I got the result of the extra bones as you see in my model.

2.Although un checking that option helped and I got all the fans over to the left side of the model or right side of the screen without duplicating any of the geo bones they were not in the right hierarchy. Is that normal? So I had to make them children in the right spots.

3. It apeared that the mirror bones plugin also mirrored the cp weights at first because I can see the circles around the cp's when the bone is selected, however I had to re weight them as it did not seem to actually mirror the cp weights. Is this normal? does mirror bones transfer the weights when used correctly?

4. Caroline has us perform the tsm flipper in stage 2. I am confused because she says to do it again in stage 10. What am I missing? My instinks tell me not to flipp in stage 2 but instead wait to do it in stage 9 just before the mirror plugins. Anything wrong with that?

[HomeSlice]

I am not an expert in the subtleties of TSM (or TSM FLipper), but with the MirrorBone plugin, it seems you have to have "right" or "left" at the beginning of the bone name, or it will sometimes duplicate certain bones.

For example, "right_upper_arm" works - it makes a mirrored bone named "left_upper_arm"

But "upper_arm_right" sometimes produces a duplicate of the upper_arm_right bone named "leftupper_arm_right" (in addition to creating a mirrored bone).

 

If you pay close attention to whatever bone naming convention you are using, it is usually pretty easy to spot the wrongly duplicated bones and delete them.

[itsjustme]

I am not an expert in the subtleties of TSM (or TSM FLipper), but with the MirrorBone plugin, it seems you have to have "right" or "left" at the beginning of the bone name, or it will sometimes duplicate certain bones.

For example, "right_upper_arm" works - it makes a mirrored bone named "left_upper_arm"

But "upper_arm_right" sometimes produces a duplicate of the upper_arm_right bone named "leftupper_arm_right" (in addition to creating a mirrored bone).

 

I've never had to put "left" or "right" at the beginning of the name...it worked for me as long as it was somewhere in the name. I haven't tried it in v15 yet though, I'll have to try it when I get home.

[itsjustme]

I repeated the demo of the MirrorBones plugin that I posted here (this time in v15e). For this test, I also changed the placement of the "right" in each bone name. Everything mirrored correctly without any problems. Here is a video of the process along with the models created for this test. I didn't show the bones being mirrored with the correct names in the video (I forgot to show them again), but you can check the actual models in the Zip and see there were no problems.

 

If you are using v15f, make sure you have the version of the MirrorBones plugin for that release...it is on this page.

mirror_bones_and_constraints_with_CP_weighting_demo_different_order.zip

mirror_constraints_demo_different_order_v15e.mov

[jason1025]

Thank you