Mirror animations in maya

Tools Maya
1

Hey guys,

I was wondering if any of you know of any scripts that mirror animations. I have to make a strafe right and strafe left animation but really don’t want to have to manually redo it. A script would be perfect for this. Or if there is an easy way without a script. I would write my own, but my limited MEL knowledge won’t help me in my short time frame. Help! Thanks in advance!

2

A long way around would be to do something like this, hierarchy being like so;

Animation Skeleton (duplicate twice)
Skeleton2
Skeleton3

(parent -> child)

  • Animation Skeleton -> Connect Attributes -> Skeleton2
  • Group Skeleton2 -> Scale Group X:-1 (mirroring it)
  • Constrain Skeleton2 -> Skeleton3

Skeleton3 should now be a mirrored version of your animation without scale transforms. Probably a bad way to do it, but it works. :D:

1 Like
3

http://art.southern.edu/animation/matchbox/ you could check this out, I have not tried it in a while.

Also, bonus tools have some basic mirror animation tools that might work for you.

4

Thanks guys

5

Hello all,

sorry in forward for my nice english :slight_smile:

my problem is that i animated a camerafly with out an motionpath. and now i need to mirror the movement of this. i tryed to scale the X value to -1 ( its a cameraGroup/ camera with Aim). the result of animation is perfect that works (in perspetive view), but i cant see throuth the “-1 scaled” camera, i didnt see my geometry. if i look this camera i see my manipulators (translate scale and rotate gizmos) as black
i tested it with maya 2011 und 2009. the other problem is that in maya2011 the rendering show my geometry and maya 2009 are the renderings with out geometry (image is “black”)

6

You can always group mirror it, then constraint a new camera to the old and then either bake it or just leave the constraint live.

7

yeah constraints, **** i forget it completly. thanks, it woks xD
i searched for any tools, but i didnt think on such simple workaround.
Big Thx to you :slight_smile:
and so what makes the different between a pro and a newbie:)

8

“so what makes the different between a pro and a newbie:)”

Ha, the real answer, -Time.

Welcome to the site, I am glad it worked.

9

ou can group the object, ‘duplicate with transforms’ the group with a scale of -X or whatever mirrored direction you want. this just means it keeps its graph editor when you duplicate it and the group is mirroring all actions underneath it in the hierarchy.

or////

‘duplicate with transforms’ the poly object, or just copy the keys from the original object to whatever, in the graph editor find the value you want ie. translate x, select all, right click edit>scale>options box. set the ‘value scale/pivot to -1’, just make sure you have the right translation or you will get funky results

hope it helps