I am modelling some character in Blender 2.79a and finished the claws (4 indivdual objects with different local orientation) on one foot. Now I want to duplicate and mirror them to the other foot, mirroring them in the global X axis (or the y-z-plane). After some attempts I found out how to mirror them around the 3D cursor located at the scene origin so that the positions are mirrored to the other side. But as you can see on the screenshot, they are still oriented in the same direction.
Is there a quick way to just mirror multiple objects with the orientation being adjusted properly?
Blendfile: http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=49067
To reproduce do the following:
- open the file “Klaatu_Body_Model_BA.blend”
- center the 3D cursor to the world origin with SHIFT+C
- set the “Pivot Point” type to “3D cursor”
- set the “Transform Orientation” to “Global”
- Select all 4 FootClaws
- Press SHIFT+D and then RMB to cancel
- From the menu choose “Object -> Mirror -> X Global”
Update 3/3/18:
Now I learned, that I have to apply Rotation and Scale to make that work properly.
But if I try that, I get the following error message:
The reason for that is, that the claws are linked objects, copied with ALT+D instead of SHIFT+D, because I would like them to share the same mesh datablock. maybe I am still not understanding Blender’s datablock system here, but I would assume that even with shared mesh datablocks, the rot/scale of the object datablock should still be independant.
However, just let’s make the object and mesh datablocks local again, but that doesn’t seem to work aswell…
Please try the following:
- In the “Klaatu_Body_Model_BA.blend” scene select any of the “FootClawLx”
- Press L, select “Selected Objects and Data” to make the linked object local.
- with the same object still selected, press SHIFT+L -> “Object and Data”
The result is, that the other claws get still selected. Also, if you switch to edit mode and edit the mesh, the other claws are still affected, therefore still sharing the same mesh datablock.
However, it works the other way around, making normal copies first, doing all the apply-mirror stuff and then linking the datablocks with CTRL+L -> “Object Data”.
So, thanks to all of you who replied to this thread, I now understand how to use the mirror feature, if using it the way it is supposed to work.
The only thing that still bothers me is the fact that I loose the local orientation of the claws which makes it more difficult to change their orientation later, if needed.