Masking for sculpting through edit mode

Question

When I am sculpting in dynamic topology I can hide part of my mesh, and it not only works as a 100% mask, but it also hides this part of mesh in dynatopo as well. I find it extremely useful when I sculpt.

Is it possible to achieve something similar with multirez? I would like to be able to achieve masking either through vertex weights or selection. In many cases it would give more precise mask than drawing it in sculpting mode.

Answer 1

The short answer is no.

While in edit mode you can hide individual vertices, which also remain hidden in sculpt mode. Dynamic topology respects these hidden vertices as it is working directly with the mesh you have partly hidden.

The multires modifier works differently as it creates new vertices that are stored within the modifier, it isn't changing the existing mesh, therefore the multires doesn't hide vertices generated around the original vertices you have hidden.

When sculpting you have several options to adjust visibility of your mesh.

• AltB to make only a section of your model visible
• H to hide sections of you mesh
• ShiftH to unhide sections of your mesh
• Use a Mask brush M to paint out parts that you don't want to sculpt on
• Hide parts that have been masked out with mask brush Hide/Mask->Hide Masked

Using dynamic topology or multires modifier has no effect on these methods, they are always available.

Answer 2

I found a work around to use vertices as a mask for multirez. In this example I wanted to keep a surface perfectly flat:

1. I created a vertex group which included all my flat surface.
2. I added multirez modifier to the model and subdivided it a few times
3. I made a copy of the object and uplied modifier
4. in the copy I went to edit, hid the selected by the group vertices
5. Sculpted right at the edge -- none of the hidden vertices were affected
6. Selected both copy and original (original last)
7. Used Reshape button to copy new geometry from the copy.