Duplicate Special does not mirror

[Anonymous]

Duplicate special *parent *instance, scale-1 does not mirror my selected object. Instead it pastes it right where my parent object is located as if I hit Ctrl+D.

Any Ideas? 

[jordan.giboney]

Hi @Anonymous

Thanks for posting! 🙂 Can you tell me what version of Maya you are working with? I just attempted this with 2018.4, and a -1 scale in x seemed to mirror as expected. Here are the steps I took:

1. Create a sphere
2. Grabbed a bunch of verts to make the mirror operation more visible
3. set the duplicate special settings and apply:
   

Is my workflow the same as yours? 🙂 Any steps I should try on my end?

A good place to start troubleshooting is to shut down Maya and reset your preferences to default - this will reset all the tools and make sure that no nodes are corrupted in the background.

Thanks for your time! I look forward to hearing from you.

[Anonymous]

I have been selecting the object in object mode to DS. I reset my
preferences by renaming the prefs folder and rebooting. Before that I went
through settings and prefs and reset all manually. I am in 2018 trial
version. Is it possible opening the file which had the issue would have
booted the issue back into my preferences instead of starting with the
defaults?
Again the -1 in first column places the duplicated shape as an exact copy.
I also notice that creating a poly cube and inputting an extra subdivision
on the width column places a subdivision along a different axis. The
settings dictate the cube be placed on the y--not the x--if i am
remembering right.

[jordan.giboney]

Thanks for your reply! 🙂 Definitely sounds like something strange going on here. 

Just to make sure that I am following the same process as you, could you create a screencast of your process for me? That way I can follow along step-by-step 🙂 Alternatively if you have a specific scene file where this behavior is occurring, can you share that on here? You can also send it to me in a pm if you would rather.

Thanks again for working through this with me! I look forward to getting this figured out.

[jordan.giboney]

Hi @Anonymous

Hope you are doing well 🙂 Just wanted to check in and see how things are going. Any new developments with this process? When you have time, a screencast would be super helpful for me to continue testing this - that way I can make sure that I am following the exact same steps as you.

Thanks for your time! I look forward to hearing from you.

[danwwright]

I had this exact same problem- but finally figured it out. For me the mesh I was trying to duplicate special had its transforms locked. I unlocked these and then the duplicate special worked correctly.