5.7 The Automatic Left-Right Separation

One of the main advantages of the BCS is the automatic creation of left and right versions of the dataPoints.

In the BCS, every weight can be either non-bilateral or bilateral. A weight that has been set to bilateral has two values: a left and a right. When the left value of the weight is set to 1 and the right is 0, the relevant dataPoints are not activated completely. Instead, only their left part is used. This so called unilateral part of the dataPoint is created using a falloff. For each dataPoint, you can specify the falloff that will be used to create its unilateral sub-dataPoints.

Advanced Info

The system not only splits up all the dataPoints with their falloffs, it also creates the unilateral sub-combinations (left-left and right-right).

Unilateral Weight Values

The two values a bilateral weight has are independent attributes, each having a unique name. These names are derived from the weight’s name. Of course, you can specify exactly how you want the unilateral names to be created. By default, the left name is the weight’s name with an appended ‘L’. The right gets an ‘R’.

Falloffs

All dataPoints that have a bilateral weight in their position become bilateral dataPoints and can then be associated with one of the falloffs.

Falloffs are not bound to the existence of any dataPoint. They are organized independently. This means you can have one falloff that is used by all dataPoints. Changing this one falloff then affects all these dataPoints at the same time. You will usually share a falloff between dataPoints with similar deformation area width. It is possible to have a unique falloff for every dataPoint.

Unilateral Tweak Geometry

You are not limited to the result of the falloff driven separation of the dataPoint. The unilateral parts of the dataPoint can be tweaked. This means that you can display the left or right part of the dataPoint and simply model it the way you want it. After tweaking the left side, you can mirror the tweaks to the right side, so that you don’t have to repeat the modeling.

But isn’t modeling a bilateral target weary?

The Mirror Geometry tool can speed up the modeling of bilateral dataPoints to the extent that it can get faster than creating a left or right version alone. Just model on one side and, now and then, press the Left to Right button to get a bilateral target. If you make some extreme changes to one side that you want to calm down a bit, just use a high blending value.