Mirroring weights is driving me nuts!

[fluffouille]

If you could send me your file at sf@pixiemedia.com (http://forums.cgsociety.org/sf@pixiemedia.com) (just the relevant part), I can probably make a small video showing you how to do it for your specific case.

[MJV]

The mirror tool is one of the most difficult tools in Cinema. The documentation is incomplete in parts and completely wrong in others. The best place to begin is with a simple character and a simple single chain rig placed at world zero. If you can't have success with this then you can post it here for others to dissect and help you. Once success is achieved you can try to extrapolate to more difficult setups.

[kattkieru]

I had similar problems last week. I tried the hints in the forum and Fluff was actually kind enough to clue me in on some things, but I got so frustrated I eventually wrote my own plugin.

You can grab it here if you're on an Intel Mac:

http://ministryofdoom.org/cloud/plugins/palsystem-r100.zip

You have to have a nice system for naming your bones, and you have to select points just like with the Mirror Tool, but after that it's a Click-Boom-Done thing. There's a readme in the zip on how to use it.

If you're on Windows, it looks like the above folks are really kind about helping out. ^_^

[Jacobo]

I had similar problems last week. I tried the hints in the forum and Fluff was actually kind enough to clue me in on some things, but I got so frustrated I eventually wrote my own plugin.

You can grab it here if you're on an Intel Mac:

http://ministryofdoom.org/cloud/plugins/palsystem-r100.zip

You have to have a nice system for naming your bones, and you have to select points just like with the Mirror Tool, but after that it's a Click-Boom-Done thing. There's a readme in the zip on how to use it.

If you're on Windows, it looks like the above folks are really kind about helping out. ^_^

Thanx a lot for the replies... I built myself an incredibly simple model, rigged equally simple, to get to learn and try out what C4D has to offer in terms of rigging. Although I was quite impressed every step of the way, I must confess that it was a bit of a turn off to come to an abrupt halt when I tried mirroring weights which is a feature that has absolutely no part in the learning curve of packages such as Maya or XSI... Kattkieru, I came across your thread as I was going thru the ones on the very issue and it's encouraging to know that someone has taken the incentive to create a viable work around... Yet, I really would like to exhaust all possible native solutions before I get into using your plug-in cuz I just need to verify where I'm going wrong... I do hope that C4D's dev team is working on the issues brought up here, and especially this one, cuz there seem to be literally dozens of cries for help on weight mirroring, like mine...

cheers;

AJ

[Horganovski]

I do hope that C4D's dev team is working on the issues brought up here, and especially this one


Don't just hope, tell Maxon support about the bug, the more people complain about this issue the more likely it is to get fixed.


Cheers,
Brian

[kattkieru]

Yet, I really would like to exhaust all possible native solutions before I get into using your plug-in cuz I just need to verify where I'm going wrong...

I had the same attitude, and I think it's commendable. I spent about two weeks fighting the mirroring tool on and off. I eventually figured out a lot, and thanks to the folks here I was able to sort out some more (turned out my main issue was that the weight tag in my file was corrupt or something -- it had weights for joints that did not exist; only discovered that through my plugin writing). Thing is, though, even when you know how the Mirror tool works, it still surprises you and still is tedious to use. The project I'm working on, the rig I'm doing is the first of many. I didn't want to have to go through this again, and even if v11 comes out there's no guarantee the director or the AD will have us upgrade.

So do continue, but if you find things still bug you please try the plugin. It's already saved me a lot of time, and it's free. ;) Good luck to ya. ^_^/

[Anadin]

Been a little while since I did this but I seem to remember that the best results I had was using the bone mirror tool rather than the joints mirror tool - for a start it actually mirrors the joints properly and weights moved more reliably..

[robotbob]

thanks katt for the generous supply of your plug. ill be sure to check it out next time i am in need of weight mirroring.

[Jacobo]

Hey kattkieru;

I do agree with your last post, sometimes getting the job done would do a whole lot more than fiddling around. But, unfortunately we're all on windows PCs, so I was unable to use your add-on... :sad: But you're really very generous to share and thanx a mil btw... Will you be working on a PC version soon?

[kattkieru]

I have a PC, and I think I have the eduwhatever version of VC++ 2005 installed. I could probably get something going. Gimme a few days and I'll see what I can do, although I can't make any promises tonight -- I'm on the tail end of an animation all-nighter. (12 hours of curve cleaning... yuck.)

Does Maxon care if I install the PC version of C4D for the SDK, but don't activate it? Anyone know how that all works? I think Kuroyume mentioned using the demo to do tests.

[Per-Anders]

You can compile plugin just using the demo version of C4D, it comes with the complete SDK and VC++ Express (which is also free, don't forget to download the platform sdk).

[kattkieru]

You can compile plugin just using the demo version of C4D, it comes with the complete SDK and VC++ Express (which is also free, don't forget to download the platform sdk).

Oh that was nice of them!

Okay, new version is up here:

http://www.ministryofdoom.org/cloud/plugins/palsystem-r100-beta.zip

Modified the readme a bit, made the Mac plugin a universal binary (PPC is untested but it should work just fine; the plugin isn't complex in its workings), and added a Win32 port. Funnily enough, the Windows plugin is 666k. ^_^;

This was compiled with VC Express 2008 (not 2005; I upgraded). I hope that doesn't make a difference. It loads and I tested it just fine with the demo on my Vista 64 machine. I don't really know anything about VC and Windows compiling that doesn't use gcc, though, so if you run into oddness or badness lemme know. Interestingly the VC compiler is waaaay more strict than gcc, so I actually corrected some bad habits of mine from AS3 and corrected a memory leak -- if you grabbed the Mac version before, please delete it and use the new beta zip file. GeDynamicArray FTW.

Jacobo, I hope you're able to use this version! Let me know?

[Horganovski]

Many thanks for the PC version, I was very keen to check this out as I've had issues too with mirroring weights. I built a very simple scene to try it out but when I run the command instead of mirroring the weights to both 'arms' it mirrors the weighting from the left arm to the right side too, so that the joints on one side of the rig contol both sides of the mesh.

User error ? Or maybe a bug?

This is the scene file I'm using for the test -Download TEST- (http://www.graphite9.com/Weighting_plugin_test.zip)
This is it in the state just before I run the command, theres no weighting on the right side and I have the points on the left side selected, then I run the command but it's behaving as I described above.

Any ideas appreciated, I'd really like to have a good alternative to the standard weight mirror tool :thumbsup:

Cheers,
Brian

[Jacobo]

Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work... I have named the bones on the left side with the prefix "left", ie. left knee, and the ones on the right with "right" ie. right knee. I selected the points on the half with good weights, set the prefix naming accordingly on the plugin window, selected the mesh as an object and hit mirror and all I got was empty weights on the right side... After a few tries cinema just froze...

[kattkieru]

Many thanks for the PC version, I was very keen to check this out as I've had issues too with mirroring weights. I built a very simple scene to try it out but when I run the command instead of mirroring the weights to both 'arms' it mirrors the weighting from the left arm to the right side too, so that the joints on one side of the rig contol both sides of the mesh.

User error ? Or maybe a bug?



Well, it's not a bug -- you have your prefixes named improperly. You have "L " and "R " on all your bones, not "L." or "R.". Since the tool defaults to the latter, you can either rename your bones or do as I did and change the prefix / suffix settings in the tools UI.

After that your scene worked fine here on my Mac.

[kattkieru]

Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work... I have named the bones on the left side with the prefix "left", ie. left knee, and the ones on the right with "right" ie. right knee. I selected the points on the half with good weights, set the prefix naming accordingly on the plugin window, selected the mesh as an object and hit mirror and all I got was empty weights on the right side... After a few tries cinema just froze...

I haven't had any issues with the plugin yet, but it's still fairly new, so it's possible you've come across an error. One thing I forgot to mention is that the plugin only mirrors across the X axis, so if you're trying to mirror across another axis then Bad Things Will Happen.

If you have a space between the prefix and the actual name, I'd also try adding the space to the prefix. But if you like I can take a look at the scene. Also, if you open the console you can copy / paste the output there and that might help me understand what's going wrong. The plugin should never freeze Cinema permanently, though. If you're working on a very complex model it will take a lot of time, but if you wait it should come out fine.

[edit] Shoot, I just realised that I also made a mistake in the docs -- Any bone without a detected prefix will be treated as a "middle" bone, meaning the weights will be flipped as if it were a spine joint. It will end up effecting both sides of the mesh. That was horgonovski's problem. So it's not just the "To" bones that get weighted, as it says in the readme.

[Horganovski]

That works great now, my eyes must have been tired last night, I never noticed the periods:blush:..

Many thanks again, I can see this being very useful.

Cheers,
Brian

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