How to mirror one hand after the other, and related copying

[XRuinX]

Okay so there's been plenty of instances where i want to copy somethings properties and apply them to something else. Exporting/importing animations comes to mind but many time's the option is greyed out.

So, for example, i currently have my models right hand balled into a fist. I want the left hand to mirror this exactly. I also have his right arm held back, ready to swing with his left arm held forward in preperation. I want to animate this so that after he punchs, he mirrors it EXACTLY with the opposite side.

How is this possible when export/import animation is greyed out for specific limbs?

[Captain Cronut]

I believe export is greyest out when you have a rig attached. Detaching the rig, however, will clear your key frames.

I haven't figured out how to paste mirrored yet. I know you can do it in blender, which makes walk cycles a lot easier. But when I do it in SFM the rotation goes all awry.

[R234]

I don't think there's a way to do that in SFM. Maybe it's possible to write a Python script for it, but coding isn't my cup of tea...

[XRuinX]

Originally posted by imagitronics:

I believe export is greyest out when you have a rig attached. Detaching the rig, however, will clear your key frames.

I haven't figured out how to paste mirrored yet. I know you can do it in blender, which makes walk cycles a lot easier. But when I do it in SFM the rotation goes all awry.

well i found out why its greyed but even when i can export/import animation, it wont work. When i import the right hand model to the left hand nothing changes. I tried changing the destination channel while importing to read the right hand as for some reason it wants to read the left (when the export was right hand only) but that didnt work either...

You'd think there'd be a known way to do this considering how useful it would be! Valve must be laughing after they took that script out lol

[PalmliX]

Firstly, exporting/importing animation isn't necessary as you can just copy/paste samples in the motion editor. However, even if you do paste samples onto the opposite hand for example, it doesn't work because every bone in a model has a unique name, with L designating bones on the left side of the body and R for the right side.

The other problem of course is that each bone occupies a different point within 3D space, so even if you somehow copied the data from the left side to the right side, wouldn't the right side just snap to the left sides position? I think even if you only copy rotation you might still be out of luck depending on the anchor point of the rotations. Try locking two limbs together (on either side of the body) and rotating one, even that doesn't work.

So you see, this actually isn't a simple problem at all. It's quite tricky, I think it would take quite the script coder to program something like this, if it's even possible.

[XRuinX]

darnit, that's unfortunate news to hear. i was hoping to copy the rotation only and not the position. you mentioned that ancoring one limb to another doesnt work, well theres a puppet script that might help with that.
of course it works between two different models but it works makes it so that anything the "master" puppet does, the child puppet does as well. so when you connect the two together, if the master does a backflip, the child will do the same thing.
link: http://sfmbox.com/docrevzins-puppet-script/

[XRuinX]

when i say "might help" i mean this script might be able to be modified to mirror a models two sides like im hoping to do.