Creating an Advanced Face Rig – Part 1.2 – Mirroring Shape Keys

by David Ward

In this supplemental tip for the Advanced Face Rig series, we go over some new techniques for mirroring shape keys due to some changes in Blender:

- proportional editing is no longer available with x-mirror
- creating new shapekey no longer copies the value of previous entries, you have to choose “new shape from mix” to do that
- “mirror shapekey” now works to do the same thing that “LEFT” and “RIGHT” vertex groups did

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Discussion

24 Responses to “Creating an Advanced Face Rig – Part 1.2 – Mirroring Shape Keys”
  1. Ernestas Viskontas
    Posts: 2

    First… And yeah this tut was awesome something I wanted to know for couple of weeks now…So thanks for the tut David!!! :D Very helpfull

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    1
     Jan 19, 2012 at 12:41 pm
  2. Diego Herrera
    Posts: 38

    this tut was very helpful
    thanks david

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    2
     Jan 19, 2012 at 12:46 pm
  3. thomas speed
    Posts: 301

    Yeah, i was wondering why no work the same, thanks Mr. Dave,
    for explaining this and showing me how to mirror them.
    You guys ROCK !!!!
    thanks

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    3
     Jan 19, 2012 at 1:28 pm
  4. olson
    Posts: 24

    New microphone David? Sounds good.

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    4
     Jan 19, 2012 at 6:58 pm
  5. Christopher Dirlam
    Posts: 3

    Thanks so much, I was stuck on this issue for a few days now. This is a great tut and I appreciate all the work you put into it.

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    5
     Jan 19, 2012 at 7:56 pm
  6. jeremiah r
    Posts: 440

    I have a question on shape keys. Do you have to texture your model before you do the shape keys because when i try to texture a soda can that already has some shape keys when i apply the texture and then try to use the shape keys it deforms the mesh a lot differently then it is supposed to. I’m really new to using shape keys so any advice would be nice like how do i texture it without having to redo all the shape keys. thanks for your time and great tip by the way. :) keep it up cya

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    6
     Jan 19, 2012 at 9:05 pm
    • Jonathan Williamson
      Posts: 2962

      Hi Jeremiah,

      You can texture your mesh anytime during the shape key process so long as you don’t alter the actual geometry of the mesh. If you have some before and after screenshots of the texture distortion I might be able to point you in the right direction.

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      6.1
       Jan 20, 2012 at 8:58 am
      • jeremiah r
        Posts: 440

        I seem to have got it to work by doing another shape key try then tried to texture it and it worked fine im not sure what happened the first try but all the shape keys got deformed pretty crazy.

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        6.1.1
         Jan 20, 2012 at 6:45 pm
  7. Mike Pegelow
    Posts: 27

    Thanks Dave, a very helpful tutorial.

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    7
     Jan 20, 2012 at 11:52 am
  8. Danny Kneip
    Posts: 175

    Thanks to Hans and Dave for this update because I was stymied by this over the past weekend. I think the change Blender has made, in regard to this topic specifically, is a very smart one.

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    8
     Jan 20, 2012 at 2:51 pm
  9. Manuel Burchi
    Posts: 7

    Great tips, thanks for your work !

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    9
     Jan 21, 2012 at 4:46 am
  10. Eugenio Pignataro
    Posts: 2

    Great video!
    Please, see this addOn. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYOdtpPELHQ

    Mix the blending area more easy!
    Divide the shapes automatically.

    This addon made the work more simple.
    Greetings.

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    10
     Jan 22, 2012 at 6:16 pm
  11. Bernard Hugueville
    Posts: 71

    Thanks for the upgrade David, I had noticed the problem in December with new versions of Blender but forgot to tell you. Great tut that helped me a lot :-)

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    11
     Jan 24, 2012 at 12:56 pm
  12. sharif ahmed
    Posts: 7

    Very Nice but i can’t download. please repair video because more video are damage…..thanks

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    12
     Feb 16, 2012 at 12:08 am
    • Wes Burke
      Posts: 429

      What are you seeing for the video? To download be sure to log into your Citizen account and the source file button will be directly below the video. Hope this helps!

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      12.1
       Feb 16, 2012 at 8:13 am
  13. eskinder
    Posts: 1

    thanks a lot it is very helpfull

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    13
     Mar 2, 2012 at 4:04 pm
  14. Adrian Oyarce
    Posts: 4

    Hello!, thanks for the tutorial, but I have now a new problem whith that. it works well until mirror the shape key, just the selected vertices act like they should, the oters keep going the same way. I checked if it was simetrical, and reaply the mirror modifier. also checked the X mirror and the topology mirror. I hope you can help me, thanks anyway!

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    14
     May 16, 2012 at 10:36 pm
  15. Rza
    Posts: 1

    Thank you David! You are realy helped us!

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    15
     May 17, 2012 at 7:45 am
  16. gus
    Posts: 3

    Hey great tutorial! I am having trouble modifying my mesh when I have a shape key other than the bases selected. Do you know why this could be??

    Thanks!

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    16
     Jul 13, 2012 at 5:33 pm
    • gus
      Posts: 3

      Basically instead of moving the mesh, some numbers just show up in the bottom left showing me where my cursor currently is, which doesn’t help me that much :(

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      16.1
       Jul 13, 2012 at 5:36 pm
  17. Saulo Augusto Duarte
    Posts: 2

    This tutorial looks great. But i have one question: is it really possible to rig and animate 2d eyes in Blender?

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    17
     Aug 6, 2012 at 4:04 pm
  18. Brian Henke
    Posts: 2

    I tried this with “jaw down” and the center vertices are mirrored causing them to be doubled when both shape keys are active. Is there a way to avoid this?

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    18
     Apr 12, 2013 at 2:14 pm
    • Brian Henke
      Posts: 2

      Ah, never mind. I re-watched the first video where you used vertex groups.

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      18.1
       Apr 12, 2013 at 2:21 pm

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