Mirroring a Half Shape perfectly?

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digiraiter
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Mirroring a Half Shape perfectly?

Post by digiraiter »

Hello
I Want to know, How to mirror a shape by an Exact Function
I know that I can select a shape
copy & paste it
thene scale it back to other side
and then try to join the points
But At list when I Scaling the shape, there is no way that I'm doing it exacty
is there no function or pre script for mirror/ symetry a vector shape in ASP 12/Moho Pro 12?
thank you
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Greenlaw
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Re: Mirroring a Half Shape perfectly?

Post by Greenlaw »

The easy way is to use DKW Root's Mirror and Swap Sides scripts. These are menu commands that can mirror a shape or parts of a shape without flipping the object. It does this by moving points around to create a morphable shape. Naturally, this assumes you have the same number of points on either side of the shape. It's not a perfect tool but it usually does a decent job and saves me a lot of time.

The 'old school' way is to make a screen grab of the head and paste it back into Moho as an image layer. Use something like Snipping tool to make the capture and copy it to the clipboard. When you paste, Moho will save the file and place it. Move this layer behind the vector layer. Set the workspace view to hide fills so you only see the outlines. Now, resize, and reposition the image layer to match the vector. Place the origin of the image layer to the center and flip the layer. Voila! you have a flipped image to reshape your vectors to.

I usually try the first method, and if that fails, I fall back to the second.

You can find DKW Root's tools here: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=28816&hilit=mirror+swap

The Menu version is the one I like to use. The download link is near the bottom of the page.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Mirroring a Half Shape perfectly?

Post by Greenlaw »

In some situations, you can duplicate the vector layers, freeze it, and copy the keyframes to frame 0. Now, flip the layer at frame zero and clear any later keyframes. This will give you a flipped version of the vectors you can use as a reference to reshape the original vectors over.

This is a variation of the screen grab method mentioned earlier. I usually prefer the screen grab method because it gives me a static reference for all the head layers. But the vector method will give you a perfect mirror reference without the additional transforming steps. I use this method if I'm only interested getting the main head shape flipped accurately, and not too concerned about exact mirroring for the facial details.

BTW, I wouldn't obsess with getting pixel perfect mirrors. So long as you're reasonably 'on model', nobody is going to notice if it's slightly off. Also, I've found that if the symmetry is not too perfect, it tends to look less digital and more hand drawn. (It's all digital of course, but you know what I mean.) :)
digiraiter
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Joined: Wed Jun 06, 2018 12:39 pm

Re: Mirroring a Half Shape perfectly?

Post by digiraiter »

Greenlaw wrote:In some situations, you can duplicate the vector layers, freeze it ...
what do you mean by freezing?
I'm looking for this function
can you explain a bit
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Greenlaw
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Re: Mirroring a Half Shape perfectly?

Post by Greenlaw »

Basically, I meant you could freeze the points (under the Draw menu) and copy the keyframed positions to frame 0.

I forgot to mention that this works only if the character isn't also posed by bones, which would add another level of deformation which isn't present at frame 0. But if you're in the rigging stage, that's probably not the case. (It depends how you're reshaping the head in the turn action.)

If, in addition to point animation, the character is also being posed with bones, you'll want to use the screen grab trick. Then you'll have an accurate reference image to 'trace' to for the mirrored pose.
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