Mirror modifier mask (vertex group)
Similarly to how the Mask modifier works, i suggest adding a "Vertex Group" option to the mirror modifier which would allow you to mirror only a selected part of the model - this way you can keep your mirrored and non mirrored models as a single object.
it might help if you export your model often and don't want to merge your objects every time or organization in general.
or for example you can have a fully mirrored character model and be able to work with it as such with a missing piece like an arm.
4 Comments
I've made two geonodegroups for this problem. First group named MirrorMarker is before the Mirror modifer that marks the faces for deletion. It uses face attributes to exclude or include as mirrored. Next is the Mirror modifier. After that another group named MirrorBreaker that deletes the unwanted faces that were previsouly marked. I implemented an extra function lately to reset the offset U option of Mirror so now it's possible to decided whether to have mirrored uvs or not for specific faces.
I wish Mirror modifier had these natively to be more selective about these decisions.
That would be awesome, specially if Multi Res can do the same.
This is impossible, because if you don't subdivide all the geometry, you end up with n-gons that are converted to triangles, which won't work as expected if you subdivide them further.
Actually the logic behind it is pretty easy.
Mirror modifier creates a "copy" (I don't find a better word to it), so copy just a piece of it it's easy.
And subdivision it's not a problem, because subd don't rebuild any part of the mesh, so the modifier don't create triangles or n-gons, if something like this happen, the problem is the user that messed-up topololy.
If you mirror the hand of a character by yourself and apply a subdivision or a multiress, all meshes will be divided, there is no triangulation or n-gon creation by the modifier, this can be a problem for people that don't know how to make good topology.
This kind of thing in a mirror modifier will be very useful, since the modifier can generate geometry and reduce the number of copies and duplication of objects.