Hi i’m making progress. I applied my mirror and have got the front leg rigs of the cow working. Only problem is the mirrored weights are both applied to Fleg02.l group. Where as Fleg02.r keeps the empty group. As you can see in the photo. But I have mirror butterfly/x-mirror enabled in pose mode so the bone chain with the empty group follows along and is not wieghted.
I tried mirror and copy vertex group from the button next to the list in the properties - vertex group menu the down <> symbol on the right. Couldn’t get those to work. Any pointers?
I’ll try repainting with mirror in weight paint mode and see what turns up. LMK if any other ideas come to mind. (I’ll try to hold onto the intermediary save file and see how that goes)
I was doing last minute editing and got the error message. “Mirror modifier not applied first results may be unexpected”. X mirror is working. When I applied I had allready parented the left leg armature so the mirrored wieight is allready there.
This isn not instruction simply notes may be useful. Mostly for people with computers that are having a large amount of system memory/RAM. Also this instruction in mostly for “parent with empty weights” function.
Due to Random Access memory I guess; the best way to accomplish the goal of applying a mirror modifier to a character while also rigging half for symmetry, is like this.
Paint your weights and click x mirror just before apply the mirror. Depending on how many edits or mistakes the function of applying the weights can disappear!
First name your bones all .L or .R accordingly at the end and symmetrize. ——> paint your weights with X-mirror turned off.
An option is to use suffix automation. Choose edit menu
I-> “batch rename” (new function since blender 2.93x maybe before, did need an add-on for this in 2.8) and choose in the draw down list that begins on -objects by default choose “bones” and in the -Type- menu choose rename and press the method “suffix”. Under name type .l or .r (there are other suffix options refer to the manual.)
Just before you apply the mirror modifier you need to check the x-mirror so that the function is live to the cpu. Because the weight bone parenting function can get complicated. Random Access Memory won’t necessarily be alligned to deliver the message. (This was the problem I had anyways.)
So back to applying mirror weights!
So long as I check x-mirror just before I applied the mirror modifier everything went smoothly.
Next in edit mode right click and press symmetrize.
The second amazing way in which this works is by Adding the symmetrical bones and simply applying the “add empty weights” again after the weights are painted to one side. So long as the symmetrical bones have all been added with suffix .r or .l (as automated by symmetrize) The mesh is possible to pose asymmetrically with the mirror modifier still active.
This is great if you are at a workstation computer and feel comfortable mesh editing btw.
Anyways its just a little tricky all these different functions because so many options are available for people to learn comfortably and for people to create their art with creative options.
