Transpose, Masking and Mesh Visibility [Skull lower jaw]

Transpose, Masking and Mesh Visibility

Some useful tools to utilize are the Gizmo and 3D Gizmo tool, as shown above. They allow you to access the Move, Scale and rotate tools all at once to precisely alter your model. To access the 3D Gizmo tool quickly you can use the Y shortcut. There are also shortcuts to just access your Move, Rotate and Scale tools, which are W, E, R respectively.

When using the 3D gizmo tool you will be faced with 7 options above it, they function as follows:

- The cog symbol leads you to the Deformers and modifiers menu

- The pin enables sticky mode to retain gizmo location 

- The Location symbol is the locator, It moves the Gizmo to the centre of unmasked areas of mesh

-The house brings the Gizmo back to the centre of the entire mesh

-The reset button resets all changes done to the Gizmo

-The lock allows you unlock your pivot to manipulate your pivot separate to the mesh, which can be useful for posing without having to rig

-The line with a check allows you to transpose the subtools, which means you will be able to alter all the objects

The next important tool is the Mask tool. The Mask tool protects areas of your work that you don't want to change, you can access it through the control key and it works similarly to a brush. You can change the intensity, size and focal shift and drag over areas of your sculpt that you would like to remain the same. If you would like to erase certain areas of mask, you must press the ctrl-alt key and drag over the area you want to remove. To invert the mask, simply press ctrl and tap the space next to your model, it should switch between black and white to signify selected and deselected areas. To completely remove the mask, press ctrl-alt and tap next to your model. If you want to select larger, less precise areas of your model, you can use the mask marquee tool which can be brought up by pressing ctrl and dragging from the space beside the model, to then move this mask marquee, press the space bar and drag the selection box. Not only is the mask tool helpful for sculpting but it also is very useful when it comes to adding texture to certain areas of the model.

This is a sculpt I made using the mask tool, I made sure to block out the face and erase areas where the horns will sit.

To view only certain parts of your model you can press ctrl shift drag to create a green box, This will hide everything that is not in green box. Alternately, you can press ctrl shift alt drag to create a red box, This will show everything that is not in red box. To view everything, press ctrl shift click into empty space.

To create the jaw for my skull [of which I remade from the previous week] I first pressed B to bring up the brush menu. I then pressed I to bring up the IMM's which I then chose the capsule.

IMM primitive H

capsule

drag down

transpose tool to place it where I want it to go

unlock to move the gizmo

Bringing the capsule below my model I used the transpose tool to adjust it to where I would like it to be, using the unlock button to readjust the Gizmo. Once i had gotten it into place, I used the symmetry tool to start blocking out the shape, I also used the dynamesh tool to make my model a bit smoother. It seems the capsule wasn't properly aligned as I had some issues with symmetry, I tried to fix this but in the end had to result to finishing my sculpt freehand. This is quite evident in the final sculpt and I am disappointed I couldn't align it properly. I really had some trouble with this sculpt, I had to restart several times and had to search a lot of things online to finish it, In all I somewhat like it, I understand how to use these tools now and I will certainly have to practice this more in the mean time. Although it took a lot longer to restart the base skull, I am very glad I did. My tutor gave me some advice that my proportions were very off in the  nose region and whilst I don't think I have it 100% correct I think this version is a lot more accurate. I also left out modelling the teeth as I think they also made my previous model look awkward.