Making pairs of mirrored Daz morphs using Blender [Solved]

lukon100

For my Daz characters, I want to make mirrored pairs of morphs, such as a morph for the left breast and a mirrored one for the right breast, wherein an ERC can be made to execute them both if desired.

So in Blender I want to sculpt a morph on the left breast and use that as the morph target file for Morph Loader Pro and so on. But how in Blender do I make the mirrored version of the morph target file for the right breast?

Blender can morror an object on the X plane, in object mode, quite easily, as shown in this super short vid:

I worry that doing so will screw up the vertex order such that Morph Loader Pro will reject it. Is this so? And if it is so, then what procedure do I really need to do in Blender to make it work correctly?

lukon100

And of course I am familiar with how to make a mesh symmetrical while preserving the vertex order for making a morph. But symmetry is not the goal. Shape-flipping is the goal. It is quite a different situation.

Padone

One way is to enable mirror by topology in edit mode, then select the mesh you want to mirror from -X to +X, then move by zero. The mirror will be applied.

lukon100

Padone said:

One way is to enable mirror by topology in edit mode, then select the mesh you want to mirror from -X to +X, then move by zero. The mirror will be applied.

I'm sorry, but could you break this down into more elemental steps? Otherwise, I have no Idea how to find a setting called "mirror by topology" to enable. I did a web search for "Blender enable mirror by topology" and found no mention of what you are referring to by the phrase "mirror by topology".

Padone

Sure.

barbult

Morph loader pro can create a mirror morph from an OBJ, right in DAZ Studio. Why do you need to do it in Blender?

lukon100

barbult said:

Morph loader pro can create a mirror morph from an OBJ, right in DAZ Studio. Why do you need to do it in Blender?

Lolz. I don't need to do it in Blender at all now that you've informed me that Morph Loader can do it.

Thanks so much, barbult!

Yes, I found Morph Loader's X swap function. And, cool, there's also the option to mirror so you don't have to make ERC to control left and right together.

Ya. Blender's X-swap equivelant shown in the vid I posted above does not preserve vertex order and will fail in Morph Loader pro. And I guess this is why they gave Morph Loader Pro the ability to do mirror swap properly for morphs.

 

lukon100

Padone said:

Sure.

Oh. Well, thanks for explaining what you really mean there.

But this is not shape flipping, or swapping. This is mirroring. And I distinctly specified that I'm not interested in mirroring. It would be shape-flipping if once the pointy ear topology were mirrored to the other side, the ear topology on the first side were made un-pointed. Move the pointy-ness to the other side, NOT make both sides pointy.

For future reference, I'd still like to know whether and how this shape-flipping/side-swapping can be done in Blender in a way that preserves the vertex order for making morphs. If you happen to know the answer, I'd still like to hear it.

Padone

There's mirror shape key by topology, so you can mirror the left to get the right.

lukon100

Padone said:

There's mirror shape key by topology, so you can mirror the left to get the right.

Ya that looks like it would work. I didn't even know what shape keys are until your suggestion propmpted me to look into it a bit. So I just gotta think like a Blender animator. Gotta set the basis key before I sculpt, scuplt one side, create that key, create the mirror key, then dial each key to 1 in turn for export to obj.

Thanks for this trick, Padone!