hello all, new to c4d and Im trying to understand symmetry mode.
Is there way to work on an object\whole mesh - and have the the other side update - without having to cut the mesh in half, add it to a symmetry thingy and so on?
I’d like to just click a symmetry button on, and click it off… is there such a thing?
thank you!!
Not in the C4D-internal functionality. And actually it’s fairly difficult to devise a system that can re-establish symmetries after the original symmetry has been broken - how should the system know what other (symmetrical) point to move when the other point had been unilaterally moved away from the symmetric position? Or worse, if the topology has been modified on one side by cutting, inserting points, or removing polys? While there are topology-comparing methods, this is not a trivial task.
Neither is the idea of just applying tools symmetrically on both sides. Internally, C4D has a messaging system that allows to capture point-move, point-insert, or edge-cut events (etc) and duplicate these actions on the symmetrical side. I believe there used to be a plugin that used this system to symmetrize models while working on them, but AFAIK it was commercial.
Some time back I thought about a plugin that simply stores the relationship between two symmetric sides, and is able to transfer point movements on click from one side to the other. This is not that difficult, and maybe I’ll program it in the future, but it will not be able to transfer topological changes like removing or adding points, so it is not exactly what you are looking for.
Thank you Cairyn… Sounds like its missing such a standard tool in an overall very complex piece of software.
so to reiterate… there is no way to symmetrically model on a mesh without cutting the mesh in half and using a Symmetry Node/deformer/whatever its called, correct?
Thanks for your time
You’re right, the sculpting tools have a built-in symmetry, and in the newer versions they can even be applied to a mesh that has no sculpting tag. That is a property of these tools, though, and does not work with the normal box modeling tools like Extrude, which do not have that option.
So, if you can make do with the sculpting tools (AFAIK they do not have topology-changing properties) then you could switch to the Sculpting toolset for symmetrical modifications.
The “Sculpt Symmetry” function, which can mirror changes from one side to the other, works only with a sculpting tag though. In a pinch, you can add a sculpting tag to your object, mirror it with Sculpt Symmetry, then use Current State to Object to freeze the sculpting modifications. I’m not sure what that does to the tags of an object in all cases though…