I have been trying to follow some of the classes on Digital-Tutors to rig my first character and I can not find an explanation anywhere of the differences between freeze transformations and the reset Xform utility. I am also unclear about what order to perform these operations during character rigging. I notice that you should freeze transformations only after you parent and not before, because it looks like parenting will move the pivot.
I have also had trouble with the reset scale tool. I am guessing it is supposed to say “whatever configuration this object is currently in is now defined as 1,1,1 scale.” But I tried this on a mirrored object (which had -1 scale for X) and it still caused it to flip around. Is there any way to mirror a bone chain and have the bones not be given a -1 scale? I ended up freezing the bones and just making a new chain using snaps.
I am using 3DS Max version 2013. Thanks for any help.