Proper way to Mirror Geometry? (Creating a human form)

[Anonymous]

Hello, I was hoping you could help with something.  I don't have the files with me to attach but I think this question might be pretty general to understand.

I'm creating a human form for a college course.  I've been creating half of the body because I assume I can mirror the geometry later on.  I've run into problems that I just can't seem to figure out by google searching.

1.  How can I make the edge that I'm mirroring perfectly in the center of the stage?  So that the mirror is perfect?

2. Is there a way to mirror "creases" (that option for creasing the smooth preview, for things like lips and stuff).  When I mirror, the creases don't mirror so the geometry isn't considered symmetrical (I think)

3.  I think I figured this part out.  I need to merge all the middle vertices right?  Is the best way to select the middle vertices and press "merge componants"? or is there an appropriate way?

4. Lastly, I think I saw someone in a video show and hide the other half of the body during sculpting.  Maybe "mirror geometry" isnt the proper tool?  Is there a way where the geometry is created and edited symetrically in real time from start to finish?

Thank you SO SO SO much for any help.  This has been killing me.

[tdHendrix]

1. For a perfect mirror make sure your center edges are snapped to the center of the grid and make sure your pivot is also snapped to the center of the grid.

2. Don't use creases so don't know about that.

3. The mirror geometry tool has an option that will merge the 2 sides for you. If you use another method to mirror, like duplicating and inverting the scale or use the mirror geometry tool without the merge option, then yea you would select the center verts and use Merge from the Edit Mesh menu.

4. In the video they might have done a Duplicate Special with the Instance option and set the Scale X to -1. Check out this video of someone showing that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKUYEyu4HQA

Unless you specifically want to hide half of the model for some reason, that is more of an old school way of doing it. Maya's move/rotate tools have a pretty useful symmetry feature these days. On the left side of Maya where you have the move/rotate/scale buttons, double click the move tool to bring up its tool options and you'll see a section for Symmetry Settings. You can turn it on and mess with the settings for it in there.