One very fortunate thing about rigging, is the fact that you are able to mirror most things. when creating a joint system, it is a lot nicer only having to create one side of something then simply mirror it over to the other side. This saves both time and accuracy. As now you do not have to worry about it matching up to the other side. Unfortunately, controls cannot be mirrored. But paint weights can.
I remember during our midterm project, we had to rig a marine. When i got to the point of skinning, I had no idea that you could mirror paint weights. I had worked by doing both sides at once. When I did the left arm, I did the right arm with it. The left leg, the right leg with it. It wasn't until I was doing the fingers that I found out that mirroring paint weights was possible, and wow how foolish I felt. While it didn't feel great to realize i wasted extra time that I didn't need to use, the extra painting did definitely help me understand paint weights more and understand it better, as it took me a long while to get it.
mirroring paint weights. what a life saver! when i found out about it was also during the marine. it really sped up the work flow of the entire project. sometimes working in 3d i feel that people like myself forget that the computer can do most of the work, but we just have to tell it too.
ReplyDeleteMirror weights saved my life.
ReplyDeletemirror weights saved my soul
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