Snap to face not working on mirrored vertices

Question

Please excuse my ignorance, but I've searched this issue all over the web and have yet to find a fix that works. I'm a beginner working through a character modeling tutorial on YouTube and am at the retopology step of the creation process. I'm really enjoying Blender and how powerful of a tool it is, but occasionally run into a few roadblocks.

The vertices you see on the right side of the character's pants are being mirrored on the x-axis using the mirror modifier. I'm snapping the faces of the low-poly retopology object I'm currently creating (tan color over the pants)to the high-poly pants object (olive color). The vertices all seem to line up properly in the mirrored side (left) until we reach the left-most vertices that stick out and don't snap to the pant faces. I've checked that all objects are centered, have their transformations applied, and even tried making a new object (which displayed the same behavior).

I'd really appreciate any insight and advice as to how I can get the mirrored vertices to snap to the high-poly pants object like the original vertices on the right. I'm sure it's some simple setting or mistake somewhere, but I can't for the life of me find it. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can only snap "real" geometry to the faces. Since the Mirror modifier isn't applied yet, you cannot edit both sides individually.

The right buttock is larger/wider than the left one. The object you're working on is perfectly mirrored to the left side, fitting the width on the right. Snapping the vertices on the right to the large buttock doesn't make them snap to the smaller buttock on the left. They are just mirrored exactly as they are on the right.

So you either have to make the buttocks mirror-symmetrical or you have to apply the Mirror modifier on the low-poly object and edit both sides individually.