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When you place something in mirror mode, why doesn't it move in mirror mode?

jtelfer
Protege
I placed an eyeball for my head in mirror mode, so I got two. Nice. But then I had some trouble. When I grabbed an eyeball to reposition it I expected the one in the mirror to move like it was in a mirror. But it doesn't - it stays at a fixed distance from the one you're moving and ignores the mirror completely.

Is this intended behaviour, and if so is there an option to turn it off?
9 REPLIES 9

bl1ndjust1c3
Honored Guest
Stupid question and doesn't help you at all, but how do you reposition individual elements? It seems to me when you grab/scale with the grip buttons, it is just transforming the entire world.

Edit: Nevermind, I'm a dumb dumb.  I didn't realize there were more tutorials after the basics.

jtelfer
Protege


Stupid question and doesn't help you at all, but how do you reposition individual elements? It seems to me when you grab/scale with the grip buttons, it is just transforming the entire world.


If you use layers (pull down on your support hand thumbstick from memory) you can add clay on individual layers and work on it independently. That's how I did the eyes - added the eyeballs on their own layer and then switched back to the main layer to pull out and detail the eye socket and lid.

There's a tutorial that goes through the stuff you can do with layers.

duncankeller
Protege
Hey jtelfer, you bring up a good point. Right now, when you sculpt with the symmetry plane turned on, it considers all of that as one layer, not two separate eyes. You can think of the symmetry applying to your tool more so than the object itself. That's why moving and scaling operations don't respect symmetry. Your best bet at the moment is to sculpt the eye, duplicate it, and position each one as you see fit. 

Sorry I don't have an easier answer for you, good luck!

jtelfer
Protege
Thanks Duncan. Would be good to know if the Medium team are looking at this. I have some other questions about symmetry, like can I move the plane to orient it differently relative to the model? Could we get 4-way symmetry (two planes at right angles to each other)?

duncankeller
Protege
Short answer is we are definitely thinking about it. You can grab the plane in scene mode (yellow button on your support hand) and move it around. Only two way symmetry right now.

I wouldn't expect the symmetry behavior to change overnight, but in the long term we are looking at the functionality and robustness of all the tools, including symmetry. We're paying attention to user feedback a lot right now, so if you have feedback about how you personally would like things to work, you'll certainly be heard!

jtelfer
Protege
Thanks Duncan, that's good to know.

Anonymous
Not applicable
Ran in the same problem, also while trying to add eyeballs to a model ! The symmetry only seems to work on the tools, whereas it could also be expected to work on layers.
A related problem is that it's also very easy to misalign objects with respect to the symmetry plane when you move them, which has disastrous effects when working on them later on (one solution could be a toggle that constrains the object movement on the symmetry plane).

TrancerSpacey
Protege


Short answer is we are definitely thinking about it. You can grab the plane in scene mode (yellow button on your support hand) and move it around. Only two way symmetry right now.

I wouldn't expect the symmetry behavior to change overnight, but in the long term we are looking at the functionality and robustness of all the tools, including symmetry. We're paying attention to user feedback a lot right now, so if you have feedback about how you personally would like things to work, you'll certainly be heard!


Very useful would be the posibility to have a 3D grid, where objects or layers even the symmetry plane layer can snap to. This would give a lot more precission.

Also cool would be, when you can move, rotate or scale objects/layers per fixed values/degrees (90°, 45°,... percent values).  When you move an object it would be cool when you could switch on/off the X,Y,Z axis.

At the moment it is a pain in the ... when you work with layers in symmetry mode and you want to grab them to move, scale or rotate them via hand movements. I work on a project and the objects/layers are offset to the symmetry plane after this. Recentering has no effect. So doing this per fixed values could help. 

P3nT4gR4m
Consultant
My thoughts on this would be for Medium to use the local axis for a layer (as defined by the layer bounds), that way you could fix x, y or z symmetry at the center of the volume and start playing about with 2 or 3-way symmetry from there. Maybe have a toggle to use the scene editor symmetry plane for those edge cases where you might want to move the axis midway through a sculpt. To be honest, tho, any time I've ever used symmetry it's been local axis.