©2012 Rich Diamant http://www.rd3d.com | Home

Vertex Locking:

There are a bunch of different options in the Vertex Locking section. This section is meant to help with locking vertices down while using any of the brush based tools.

LOCK VERTS THAT LIE ON THE MIRROR AXIS:

If this option is clicked, any vertices that lie exactly on the mirror axis will be locked to that mirror axis. For example, if "x" is the mirror axis, and you have a row of vertices that are snapped to 0 on the "x" axis, they will not move off of the "x" axis when trying to move or smooth them with any of the brushes. The biggest use for this is when you want to duplicate one side of your mesh with an instance of the other. If you delete half of the mesh, and the vertices are snapped to the "x" axis, then you have the freedom to move the vertices around with the brushes without having to worry that they will leave the snapped position.

NOTE: If you use this option, you do not want to have "mirror" on. If you do have "mirror" on, you can get odd results. This is made especially for non mirrored objects.

LOCK AXIS:

If you click any of the check box Axis's, you will lock any vertex movement on that axis. This can be useful when you want to use the Grab Brush to move vertices around without moving them, for example, on the "z" axis. You can also use this to only move on specific Axis's by checking the other cooresponding Axis's.

PIN VERTS / UNPIN VERTS:

Pinning and unpinning vertices work exactly like pinning and unpinning in the custom RD UV Editor. You must select the vertices with any of Maya's contexts and click "Pin Verts" or "UnPin Verts". Once you do that they will turn green in the viewport. Pinned Verts only work with the custom Brushes in Diamant Modeling Tools. If a vertex is pinned, using any of the movement or smoothing functions in the brushes will not affect the verts.

NOTE: When you pin a vertex you are creating a locator in the scene that draws the vertices. This means if you dont Unpin the verts, the locator will remain in the scene. In addition, if you delete an object with pinned verts on the object, the pinned verts will not be deleted.

NOTE: If you are using the Advanced Modeling Tool, and you edit geometry, your pinned vertices will change. This happens because the pinned vertices are based off of the current point order of the object. Certain modeling opperations change the point order of the mesh which in tern will change the location of the pinned vertices. It is not recommended to have any pinned vertices if you are planning on editing a mesh.

<-- Previous | Next-->