Mirroring bone position on opposite side of body

Support Animation and Rigging
1

Hi, this might be a bit of a noob question, but i’ve set up a pretty complex posture on one side of a characters body, and want to copy the bone positions to the other side. Is there any way of doing this?

I’m aware of using the armature mirror function while moving bones, but how about after the bones have been moved?

Cheers in advance for any help.

2

First, rename all your bones on the left or right sides to “L.(name of bone)” and “R.(name of other bone)” so that each name is preceded by an L or an R, followed by a period, and then the same name for both bones in a symmetrical pair. This tells blender what bones are identical mirrors of each other. (for example, L.arm and R.arm , L.leg and R.leg.)

Then, in pose mode, select the bones you have posed, and use these buttons in the header of the 3d window:
http://i10.tinypic.com/35d59fq.jpg

Copy the pose with the first button, then paste the pose on the other side with the third.
Hope that helps.

3

You can also use L anr R suffixes, lihe arm_L and arm_R or leg.L and leg.R
And sometimes the “paste mirrored pose” button act strangely. So be shure that:

  • in object mode, the armature does not have any rotation
  • your character is walking according to the Y axis (mine was walking through X)
    And (something I don’t understand because it doesn’t work in my case) you should apply scale and rotation to the armature (in object mode) before making any pose. Do it by Ctrl-A.
4

Excellent! Thanks a lot guys that’s really helpful.

Slowly getting used to all these buttons…