Soft selection mask in Maya

iamolvr

Hello, guys, is there any way to mask vertices when using soft selection?

I want to use soft selection to move outlined vertices to make shape more rounded, but i dont want other vertices to be moved. so can i mask them or something like that?

Neox

i am not fit enough in maya to answer this question BUT

you could select the vertices you want to edit and use a lattice volume to deform them softly

Alex_J

Not sure if this is exactly what you need, but go in the tool settings and you can change falloff type to either volume of surface. This is most useful for dealing with a non-contiguous mesh though. 

In your case, I think you want to adjust the edge but not get into the holes thhere? Are you aware of adjusting the falloff size by holding B and middle mouse dragging? I would just grab the vertcies along the edge and reduce the falloff.

Lastly, you can use the sculpt brushes. There is a freeze brush, and then the grab brush can be used together. Another way is to just move only the vertices you want without soft selection, and then to even the quads back out use the sculpt/relax brush to even out your topology without breaking the volume. The are methods I use for character/organic stuff, and may not be the best thing for hard surface due to lack of precision.

iamolvr

Neox said:

i am not fit enough in maya to answer this question BUT

you could select the vertices you want to edit and use a lattice volume to deform them softly

Thanks! that's certainly what i needed

iamolvr

BIGTIMEMASTER said:

Not sure if this is exactly what you need, but go in the tool settings and you can change falloff type to either volume of surface. This is most useful for dealing with a non-contiguous mesh though. 

In your case, I think you want to adjust the edge but not get into the holes thhere? Are you aware of adjusting the falloff size by holding B and middle mouse dragging? I would just grab the vertcies along the edge and reduce the falloff.

Lastly, you can use the sculpt brushes. There is a freeze brush, and then the grab brush can be used together. Another way is to just move only the vertices you want without soft selection, and then to even the quads back out use the sculpt/relax brush to even out your topology without breaking the volume.

I didn't know about last method but it works fine. Thank you!

throttlekitty

Ah this drives me nuts! We used to have this many, many versions ago. Supposedly the MTK has an option for locking, but I could only ever find documentation for LT, I don't see it anywhere in 2018 standard.

Aside from sculpting, you could use deformers, but paint their weights in a similar fashion, but this is just as annoying for something small. Another alternative is to detach what you want to be affected, then clean and weld crap into place...

oglu

Create a blendshape and mask the verticies you dont want to move. 

onionhead_o

i would use lattice in that situation.  Create a standard lattice>set the amount, in you case i would say 3 -4 in S divisions > dive into the ffd attributes> set outside Lattice to falloff> increase local influence for a nicer curve> adjust lattice> Great success

nice thing about this workflow is that you can adjust as much as you want. Just play with the falloff values or Envelope to get nicer transitions.

If you do not care about the other vertices. you could even skip the falloff and just select the vertices you want to edit and just Create deformer instead.

claydough

no access to maya to test but...

have u tried the soft selection's deformer (tool) instead of the default interactive soft selection deformation?
In that way you could probably just remove the vertices in question from it's set? via the component or set editors I imagine?
( without any effect to your envelope's initial interactively placed falloff )

if so...
A customised soft deformer Context brush tool which is overloaded with an additional interactive option
( deselecting components from the initial set )
should be pretty easy to make.