Mirror skin weights not working for shoulder

[sndye]

I am having a strange issue with the mirror skin weights tool. It's working, but not for the Right shoulder. Not sure what the issue is. I appreciate the help.

[kirbysteele]

Hello snyde,

After looking at the file that you linked, I believe the issue is related to the fact that you have two joints right on top of each other. On the right side the shoulder joint and another joint name joint10 are in the exact same position. I think that when Maya is attempting to mirror the weights is is not able to figure out which one to use. If you simply select joint10 and joint8 and then select the mesh and use the tool Edit Influences>Remove Influence, mirror skin weights should work properly after that. 

Hope this helps.

Kirby

[Anonymous]

Oops wrong account. Posting again with proper account 🙂

[tdHendrix · Accepted solution]

Kirby is right, it's cause you have 2 joints right on top of each other. To fix it you can assign labels to the shoulder joints in the attribute editor so Maya can tell them apart. I attached a pic of what the options look like. Do the same for the right shoulder (except change the side from Left to Right). Also Rigging Dojo made a guide on the best Mirror Skin Weights settings which you can find here: http://www.riggingdojo.com/2015/01/08/maya-mirror-settings-for-skin-weights

[sndye]

That worked. Thank you very much!

[ZULEIKA.FIRPO]

None of these options worked for me. I ended up moving the shoulder joint in x out a bit to create separation mirroring the weights and then moving them back. This was for a vicon rig being put in a different model where the shoulder joints for both left and right overlapped.