Have you ever held the edge of a mirror up to your face to see half of your head in the mirror? Many objects have a natural symmetry that you can exploit to require that only half an object be modeled. The human face is a good example. You can clone symmetrical parts using the Mirror command.
The Mirror command creates a clone (or No Clone if you so choose) of the selected object about the current coordinate system. To open the Mirror dialog box, shown in Figure 9.5, choose Tools Mirror, or click the Mirror button located on the main toolbar. You can access the Mirror dialog box only if an object is selected.
Figure 9.5: The Mirror dialog box can create an inverted clone of an object.
Within the Mirror dialog box, you can specify an axis or plane about which to mirror the selected object. You can also define an Offset value. As with the other clone commands, you can specify whether the clone is to be a Copy, an Instance, or a Reference, or you can choose No Clone, which flips the object around the axis you specify. The dialog box also lets you mirror Inverse Kinematics Limits, which reduces the number of IK parameters that need to be set.
CROSS-REF | Learn more about inverse kinematics in Chapter 40, "Adding Inverse Kinematics." |
Many characters have symmetry that you can use to your advantage, but to use symmetry, you can't just clone one half. Consider the position of a character's right ear relative to its right eye. If you clone the ear, then the position of each ear will be identical, with the ear to the right of the eye, which would make for a strange looking creature. What you need to use is the Mirror command, which clones the object and rotates it about a selected axis.
In this example, we have a complex mechanical robot with one of its legs created. Using Mirror, you can quickly clone and position its second leg.
To mirror a robot's leg, follow these steps:
Open the Robot mech.max file from the Chap 09 directory on the DVD. This file includes a robot with one of its legs deleted.
Select all objects that make up the robot's leg in the Left viewport, and open the Mirror dialog box with the Tools Mirror menu command.
In the Mirror dialog box, select X as the Mirror Axis and Instance as the Clone Selection. Change the Offset value until the cloned leg is in position, which should be at around-2.55.
Any changes made to the dialog box are immediately shown in the viewports.
Click OK to close the dialog box.
Note | By making the clone selection an instance, you can ensure that any future modifications to the right half of the figure are automatically applied to the left half. |
Figure 9.6 shows the resulting robot-which won't be falling over now.
Figure 9.6: A perfectly symmetrical robot, compliments of the Mirror tool