Hi. I'm writing this while not in the calmest of moods. I'm been desperately trying to rig and animate a character for a game but Maya will not cooperate with me in the slightest. Aside from hair, my character is perfectly symmetrical but when I try to mirror the skin weights, it's only some sort of loose approximation of the weights I painted on the left side. 

I have no idea how to make this work and I'm seconds from ripping my hair out. Truth by told I think I would much rather pull a rigger onto my team than try to do this myself anymore because I do not have any luck with it. I can model and animate, but rigging NEVER works for me.

Please please please I am desperate and need ... guidance ... I am the ONLY person making assets on my team and I am in need of more hands on this project. Maya already deleted months of work I had done, and now I cant get back to where I was. 

I have constant problems with Skin mirror tool in 3ds max, unless I drop the skin modifier and load it new, put bones in, and load in from file my one-side weights. But in the first place, make sure you have perfectly "mirror" placed your actual bones, and that the center-unique bones have their pivot in the very center calibrated.