For the most part when I pose a piece of one side of my model, copy the pose, and paste it X-flipped, it works like I expect it to. However I have a claw on my model and for some reason when I paste that x-flipped, one of the talons is very different (asymmetrical). What do I need to look into to figure out why this is happening or how to correct it? I have verified that the rotation numbers look correct (Y and Z are inverted and X and W are copied).
In the armature properties, turn on bone axis display. Check the z-axis of the bones, they should match from left to right sides. I normally orient the bones so the z-axis either points upwards (for horizontal bones), or forwards (for vertical bones). To correct the axis, in edit mode, select the correct bone, then shift-select the offending bone, ctrl-N -> active bone (I think) or in the transforms panel (while in edit mode) there is a bone roll field, change the value there.
Randy
Thank you! I vaguely remembered seeing something like this done in the 10 part “stylized dragon modelling” tutorial I recently watched, but I couldn’t remember exactly what/where these bone axes were. I wonder how the axes would have gotten so mixed up. I thought I had mirrored the armature. Rather than manually orient the axes on both sides, would it be practical to delete one side of the armature, fix all the orientations on the other, then duplicate everything that’s not on the center line, scale it across the X axis at -1, then re-attach things to the appropriate center bones line from the other side? Or is there a better way? I think there’s a way to flip the names from “L” to “R” after I do this automatically too, right?
For the benefit of anyone following in my footsteps: yes, I am able to delete the right half of the armature, center the 3D cursor (with Shift-C) switch the pivot point to the cursor, duplicate (Shift-D) the selected part of the armature, scale the selected part of the left side of the armature across the center (where the cursor/pivot is) with a scale of “-1”. This creates a mirror image of the selected part of the armature, and it’s even still connected to the spine. Then to correct the names, this linking the bones to the proper vertex groups, I just select “Flop Names” from the Armature menu in edit mode with the same (flipped) bones selected. Very handy!
I should add (I just discovered) that copying and mirroring the bones does not apply the proper bone orientations to the mirrored bones. Apparently that needs to be done manually on each side.