Symmetric drawing?

[dkwroot]

In GIMP, they're developing a feature called symmetric drawing which basically allows the user to turn it on and then whatever they draw on one side of the canvas gets reflected and drawn on the other side. Blender has a similar feature called "Mirror Modifiers" and I believe a couple of other drawing programs have this as well.



Anyway, I was wondering if AS has something like this or if anyone has any tips to keep everything symmetrical? I find it hard to modify faces and tweak expressions while keeping both sides of a face even.

[AmigaMan]

If you want things symmetrical it's easy enough just to select and copy half the face points, copy, flip horizontally and then join the two halves together.

[dkwroot]

If you want things symmetrical it's easy enough just to select and copy half the face points, copy, flip horizontally and then join the two halves together.

Yes, building the faces is simple as that, but modifying them is where I'm having trouble. I like to draw faces that are very rubbery and expressive, but it's hard to modify while keeping symmetry.

NEVERMIND, I figured out a way ... but it's kinda weird. Basically, I just assigned a bone to each point of the face. I then set it so that the bones on the left side are position dependent on the bones on the right side. I then set the x position control to -1 and that seems to have solved the issue.

[AmigaMan]

Ah, I see what you mean. I would just do it by eye. It's not critical that everything is perfectly symmetrical, especially in expressions anyway. Real faces are never perfectly symmetrical.
However, you seem to have found a solution that you are happy with

[strider2000]

I was interested in this today and searched and found this thread, but didn't want to create a bone per point. After thinking about it I figured out a way to do this pretty easily I believe I got the main idea of using onion skins while constructing, from jessica951 in her character creation video (Thanks Jessica), but I don't recall if she actually did this kind of mirroring (so the entire idea may be from her). Anyway hope it helps others.

[jezjones29]

As of Anime Studio 11, another option would be to use reference layers.
I've made this example: http://www.animestudiotutor.com/shared_files?id=231