Lesson 7: Mirroring Muscles
 
 
 

The Muscle Creator lets you mirror muscles in your scene using their naming convention as reference. You can mirror a selected muscle at any point in your creation process.

Open the scene

  1. Load the Sabertooth_Mirror_Muscle_Start.mb file.

    This scene contains the sabertooth tiger with muscle applied to the neck and leg joints. Here, you first mirror the muscle from the front leg, then the neck, and finally the hind leg.

Mirror Muscle

  1. Select Muscle > Muscles/Bones > Muscle Creatorfrom the main menu.
  2. Click the Create tab.

  3. In the Mirror section, select X as the Mirror Axis.
  4. Enter _L in the Search field, and _R in the Replace field.

    The muscle for each “side” of the mesh needs to be parented to joints that follow a Left or Right naming convention.

    Tip You can also -click the Search field and select from the available naming conventions. This automatically fills in the Replace field.
  5. Select the front leg muscle surface.
  6. Click Mirror Muscle from Selection.

    A new muscle is created on the right front leg based on the selected muscle.

  7. (Optional) To mirror an additional muscle, select a muscle, then click Mirror Muscle from Selection again.

Beyond the lesson

In this lesson you learned how to mirror muscles from one side of the mesh to the other. A completed file for this lesson, Sabertooth_Mirror_Muscle_End.mb, can be found.