In Maya, can one mask an area of the mesh, then blur the mask, invert mask, then inflate?

bendfate

Hello!

I am very new to maya, and I am wondering if I can perform operations on models such as masking an area of the mesh,  then blur that mask, invert the mask selection, and ultimately inflate that area? I understand that if there are such functions in Maya, the names are probably different. But I am just looking for anything that is similar to these functions.

The question is best illustrated with these 3 screenshots from Zbrush.

It was a very frequent and useful method for my time with Zbrush, so I am wondering if there is something similar, or the same in Maya.

Thanks!

throttlekitty

In sculpting mode Maya's masking is called "freeze" and works about the same, then you'd switch to the bulge brush via right click.

We also have soft select for standard modeling tools, though it's not as elegant as some of the things you can do with a painted mask in ZB. It's more straightforward though, just enable it with the hotkey (J i think), adjust its size and do your transforms.

Alex_J

Press B to toggle soft selection while in component mode. Hold down B, middle click or left click, and slide the mouse to adjust the falloff radius of the soft select. 

Also, you can use the quad draw tool, press B for soft select, and this will essentially work like Zbrushes move brush. But be aware of the auto-weld option in the tool menu. If this is on, you might accidentally weld some vertices you didn't mean to.

Beyond Maya's sculpting tools mentioned, I think the best way to "inflate" an area would be to select the relevant vertices, select the move tool, go to tool settings and change the drop down selector to normal, and then drag the vertices out along their normals (the N on the manipulator). Again for this, you may want soft select on to get a smooth transition.

If you have trouble selecting only the vertices you want (and not grabbing vertices through the model on the other side), in the tool selects of the selector tool (Q) you can turn on camera based selection or automatic camera based selection. Check out the documentation to see what those do -- pretty helpful so you don't waste time spinning around your model to deselect things.