I have a feeling that this is one of those “easy once you know how” questions. At least I Hope so. I did things the hard way and created a fully rigged wing, complete with shape keys w/ drivers, and then set about mirroring it into a second wing. I’ve succeeded with everything except the shape keys. The effects of the shape keys were also mirrored so that the left wing’s armature is controlling the shape keys for both wings.
My guess is the the most efficient path now is to somehow reset the vertices in the right wing to basis so that the left wing’s shape keys only work on the left wing vertices, and then produce mirrors of the shape keys and assign drivers on the right wing. Is that correct?
Only catch is, I can’t seem to be able to clear the shape keys on the right wing. I tried “blend from shape” but it doesn’t appear to do anything. I never get a dialog to select which key blend.
Well I took a look at this. If it were me, I would just select the wing on the left side that you have already selected in the blend you posted and separate by selection. P. Now you have two distinct objects but your shape keys will work correctly. If that helps. Otherwise I think you might have to redo them because your basis would now be the entire mesh. Beats fiddling with vertex groups!
Thanks! That’s brilliant. I don’t know why I was so hung up on keeping them as a single object. It’s also going to make life a lot easier when I need to put them on an animal with a different girth.
…and it almost worked to. That is to say, I was almost able to pull it off without messing something up. I have a single bone, ph2.R that has become rolled. I’m not sure how I managed to do that. I thought it would be a simple matter to roll it back, but it seems linked somehow to the parent of its opposite, m2.L. When I role one, the other gets messed up. I can’t figure out where the linkage is. I could start the process over and hopefully avoid this, but it’s common enough that I curious if there’s a relatively easy fix.
For the ph2.R. m2.L issue… The armature has X axis mirror turned on in options, but it isn’t oriented where the X axis makes sense. In object mode, do Ctrl-A and apply the rotation and scale, then in edit mode, select the bones on the left and do menu Armature->Symmeterize.
Also keep in mind, if you like a single object, after you separate the two wings and renamed the shapekeys for .L/.R, you can join(Ctrl-J) them back together, and you’ll get 4 shapekeys that only affect what they should.
I would have spent days before I’d found that check box. Completely forgot I’d done that. Thanks. Rejoining broke the .L shape drives, but it was a fairly simple matter to recreate them. Thanks!