Mirror the tissues and attchments

Taylor

ZIVA VFX is really awesome! It brings the creature simulation to a whole new level.
But I was wondering, is there any way to mirror the tissues and attachment settings from one side to the other side easily?
Say I have a set of fully symmetrical muscle meshes (the topology is symmetrically the same), after complex attachment and parameter test in one side, could I mirror these settings to the opposite side via any ZIVA native function?

andy_vs

Taylor
Hey Taylor,

Glad you like it!

Absolutely -- look into the zBuilder stuff. It's a Python interface for doing exactly the sort of thing you're after.

https://vfx.zivadynamics.com/docs/index.html

Mirroring with zBuilder works best when your objects (meshes and Ziva related nodes) use a consistent naming convention.

Let us know how it's working for you! 🙂

Taylor

Thank you, Andy.
I take a little while to figure out how to use the python tool correctly, and realized that we need a good naming convention of every ZIVA object on both side first, then the tool will works well.
Thanks a lot! You are the best.

andy_vs

Taylor
Ya it does work best when the nodes are named something like l_bicep_zTet etc. There's the zQuery command too, to help you if you wanted to write a quick script to name everything automatically.

Haha thanks!

Taylor

For rename the related Ziva nodes, zQuery is really convenient. Thanks !

neilr

There is a rename_ziva_nodes() function in the ZMaya.py module too.

Stathis

HI,
i am trying to mirror with zBuilder and i always get that error: /Documents/maya/2017/scripts\zBuilder\nodes\base.py line 72: list indices must be integers, not str #

Even in a simple scene with just a sphere as a tissue i get this error.
I created a sphere named it l_tissue, make it tissue from ziva menu and rename all nodes with l_tissue as a prefix.
Then i mirrored the sphere select the left one and run this:

select left muscles in scene

z = zva.ZivaSetup()
z.retrieve_from_scene_selection()
z.string_replace('^l','r')
z.apply()

maybe i am doing something wrong...

andy_vs

Stathis
Hmm strange!

I'll let Lonnie chime in but just confirming you're using this for your string_replace:

z.string_replace( '^l_', 'r_' )

(I used code tags as the forum seems to do auto formatting on that character combination)

Stathis

andy_vs
yes i do, i copied from here: https://vfx.zivadynamics.com/docs/index.html

Viktor

andy_vs Hi Andy.
Ziva is amazing plugin!

image image-2018-09-27-12-26-07.png
I do not know how to write the script program in Maya. I need to do mirror muscles. Can you halp me with another ways?

lkraatz

Stathis

Hey Stathis,

So I just did what you did

created a sphere named "l_tissue"
made it a zTissue
named zMaterial, zTissue, zTet with a 'l_tissue_' prefix
created new sphere named "r_tissue"
selected "l_tissue"

ran this in script editor

z = zva.ZivaSetup()
z.retrieve_from_scene_selection()
z.string_replace('^l','r')
z.apply()

After that the r_tissue has the correct settings and zNodes applied.

I'll dig a bit deeper, though is there any other insight? You can try emailing the simple sphere test to me @ lonniek at zivadynamics.com and the exact code you used.

lonnie

Stathis

Hi Ionnie,

i did exactly what you did and i still i get this error:
/Documents/maya/2017/scripts\zBuilder\nodes\base.py line 72: list indices must be integers, not str #

The first time i did the test i rename everything with the prefix, not only zMaterial, zTissue and zTet
but also, zEmbedder, zGeo even tweak!!

Today i did the test with renaming only zMaterial, zTissue and zTet but nothing happens..
Also one question is it important to create a new sphere or i can duplicate the existing one, mirror, freeze transforms and delete history?
i have send the scene with the ball at your mail
Thank you very much for your help

lkraatz

For those of you following along this has been resolved by updating to the latest zBuilder.

Download it here:
https://bitbucket.org/zivadynamics/ziva-vfx-utils/downloads/

Or if you are familiar with git you can do a pull:
https://bitbucket.org/zivadynamics/ziva-vfx-utils

tristan_cordeboeuf

to do that the best way is to begin by renaming all your muscle and having a naming convention like l_muscleName and having the same naming convention for the skeleton

import maya.cmds as mc
import zBuilder.builders.ziva as zva
selection = mc.ls(sl = True)
for obj in selection :
    mc.select(obj)
    zObj = zva.Ziva()
    zObj.retrieve_from_scene_selection()
    zObj.string_replace( '^l_', 'r_' )
    zObj.string_replace( '_l_', '_r_' )
    zObj.build()

Viktor

tristan_cordeboeuf Thank you bro. When I connect muscle points to a bone with vertex, mirror is working cool.

image 1.png

image 4.png

and when I connect muscle points to the bone by Proximity Options, connection is working wrong

(sorry for my English, It is so bad)

image 3.jpeg

image 6.jpeg

andy_vs

Hi @Viktor

I could be wrong but it looks like there might be some confusion about what selectVerticesByProximity does here.

Having an attachment and a mesh selected when running this tool doesn't make sense, in the context of what it's designed for.

It's just a tool to help you make a vertex selection between two meshes that are near each other. You usually then go and use the resulting vertex selection to make an attachment. But you can use the selection for whatever other purpose you like 🙂

Hope that clears it up

Viktor

andy_vs yeah, Thank you very much : )

mandala

Hi good people at Ziva's,
Thank you for contributing and helping the community, really helps a lot reading trough this forum.

I have an issue with tissue mirroring. I managed to mirror it with:

import zBuilder.zMaya
zBuilder.zMaya.rename_ziva_nodes()

All my nodes are symmetrically named and all that, but when I mirror it I get this result.
Right side is corrupted, and it doesn't transfer my line of action curves. Am I missing some big step? Do I have to recreate my rivets/clusters/curves and plug them manually?

Also I found this bug that it won't mirror from Left to Right (naming wise), only from R to L.

Thank you in advance for your help,
d.
image wrongmirror.jpeg

lkraatz

mandala Hey Mandala,

The command

import zBuilder.zMaya
zBuilder.zMaya.rename_ziva_nodes()

Just renames the nodes, it doesn't mirror anything. Are you sure you used that command to mirror? From the image it is hard to tell what is going on. Could you possibly list steps to reproduce that gave you these results? It would be a big help as well if you could send the file to support@zivadynamics.com as I can try and reproduce it on the same rig you are using.

mandala

Hi Ikraatz,

Yes I used that for renaming, sorry I mistyped.

One thing I did changed in the proces is alembic bone names. I imported cached bone animation and converted them into Ziva bones. Later I just wanted to rename bone names. But little did I know - that maya leaves your original object name for output nodes, when you rename. So, for example, I had L_humerus as object name and L_bone as ziva output bone node name. So that was one the reason mirroring didn't work, at first 🙂

But then I went out and manually fixed and renamed those output node names to mach the object name. And thats how I got this wierd mirror result.

After a while I just started over. This time with clean alembic and it works like a charm. So, in theory my rename incident should work but I think the whole scene got somehow corrupted. I sent it via WeTransfer, hope thats ok. Im using 1.5, indie licence.

Can you tell me if it's possible to mirror line of action curves and their properties?

Thank you.