Blender For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Sculpting Multiresolution Meshes

Over the years, as computers have gotten more powerful and more capable of handling dense high-poly models with millions of vertices, computer graphics artists have wanted more and more control over the vertices in their meshes. Using a Subdivison Surface modifier is great for adding geometry to make models look more organic, but what if you're modeling a monster and you want to model a scar in his face? You have to apply the modifier to have access and control over those additional vertices. And even though the computer may be able to handle having them there, a million vertices is a lot for you to try to control and keep track of, even with all the various selection methods and the Proportional Edit Tool. Fortunately, Blender supports multiresolution meshes and Sculpt mode.

Multiresolution (or multires) meshes address the problem of having to apply the Subdivision Surface modifier before you can directly control the vertices that it creates. With a multires mesh, you can freely move between a level 1 subdivision and a level 6 subdivision, just like with the Subdivision Surface modifier. However, the difference is that you can directly control the vertices of the level 6 subdivision just as easily as the level 1 subdivision by using Blender's Sculpt mode. And you can see changes made in either level — to varying levels of detail, depending on the level you're looking at. (If you make a very fine detail change in level 6, it may not be readily apparent ...