How to rotate/mirror a 3d animation?
I currently have a FBX animation model of a biped moving slightly forward (positive Z axis), turning around 180 degrees, and starting to run in the opposite direction (negative Z axis). However, I would like to completely mirror such animation, in other words, start heading the negative Z axis, and the turning forward the positive Z axis. This, preferably through 3dsMax.
I know what you must be thinking, "Why the hell doesn't he just rotate the transform component/object of his animation character??". Well, unfortunately the current code I am working on depends that the characters movement should be independent of the actual animation, among other limitations.
Apparently, according to our 3d designer here, there is no trivial "Rotate Animation" option in 3dsMax (does that check?), so I am looking for possible scripts that could help me out. Anyone ever heard of such solution? Thanks in advance.
Answer
Create a dummy aligned to the root of your model. Link the root of the model to that dummy. With only the dummy selected, click the mirror button on the maintoolbar.
This will create a mirror image of the bones along with the animation on those bones. The only caveat is the names of the bones will also be mirrored. eg. the arm called 'right_arm' is now now on the left side.
If you need to preserve the animations to the original bones, look into using the animation mixer. This allows loading and saving animations onto characters. But it also has object mapping feature that allows objects of different names to load on saved animations.
So create a mapping. Save the mirrored animation. And load it back onto the original bones with that mapping.