I have been having a very difficult time transferring my rigging skills into blender mainly having to do with mirroring bones from the positive X axis onto the negative X axis.
I want you to respond if you are able to describe a solution to the problem I am having.
I understand that I am not the only person having this problem.
I create one half the the rig and am fully capable of duplicating it, pressing enter, even “flipping” the names and then pressing control key + M to mirror along the X axis.
(shift +D, enter , then control +M ,enter )
However, once I do this I notice that the bone rolls are not completely the same and I have to manually realign them, therefore breaking the symmetry of the rig.
You’ll see here that once I press the fancy hotkeys, even though I am able to completely mirror the bones in blender 2.9 that the bone rolls do not follow the same rotation data.
Is there any “expert” out there who can guide me into the correct path into fixing this problem?
Besides manually redoing the rolls myself?
How are you supposed to do rigs with angled arms if this happens? It’s literally impossible to copy the local rotations if you’re doing something like that.
Is it a naming problem?
Every other 3d program I have used mirrors the bones correctly but blender does not.
It mirrors the positions but not the rotations of the bones.
Why don’t you use the Symmetrize function? In Edit mode, select your left bones (they must have the “L” suffixe) and in the header menu > Armature > Symmetrize. You should not have dissymmetry
Ok, I’m gonna try that out with the L suffix (and or .L suffix) and let you know if that actually fixes my problem. I appreciate your reply. I’m going to make a youtube video about this if we manage to find a reliable solution.
that’s the safest solution. To align the bones with axis, go in Edit mode, select the bone(s) and shift N to recalculate on the wanted axis (and to rotate on its Y axis, ctrl R of course). But you should not need it after Symmetrize
moonboots I think you solved it. It actually was a naming problem. I tried symmetrize -without- the .L suffix and it never worked before. Then I tried it with the .L suffix and it worked.
Bones do not show up with symmetrize if your naming does not have the proper suffix.
People don’t mention that (at least enough, or mention this problem and how it completely breaks the function of symmetrizing)
Ok I’m pretty sure this is solved. For anyone else who cares or has the same problem I renamed my bones to have “dot L” suffixes and then used symmetrize in the “armature > symmetrize” while in edit mode
WOuLD you LOOK AT THIS?!??
@moonboots hopefully you dont mind I’ll be making a youtube video and linking this post since you were so helpful. Not sure if you have to have exactly “dot L” or just “L” suffix but this needs to be stressed more. All the blender rigging tutorials on youtube don’t mention this at all really.
They just “copy and mirror” and completely gloss over the bone roll thing, or just say “put all your rolls to y axis global.”
you can even auto-name in the header menu > Armature > Names > AutoName, but of course the bone(s) need to be either on the left or right side of the X axis
I might try that out. I really appreciate the effort you took to reply as this is literally animation breaking stuff if it doesn’t work right. You literally saved my career partially even though I don’t really have one yet. I went to school for this stuff but I’m trying to learn blender because its free and if I make something in blender like this anyone on the planet can use it.
Thanks. I’ll update more later but I’m pretty sure this absolutely solved this nasty problem.
Thanks to moonboots, mankind can take one more step.
And also thanks to breadcola for taking moonboots criticism and running with it.
actually at the beginning you used the old technic, I don’t even remember how it worked (edit: oh yes ctrl M works, a bit tedious though), now Symmetrize is much easier, and it renames correctly all your bones. Good luck!
