Sculpting with multi level subdivision surface? How to?

[hi]

Hi,

i am trying to get into the sculpting tools with Maya2016. So i want to do a workflow similar to Mudbox or ZBrush, where you switch between low and hi res levels while sculpting.

I read the docs, and as far as i understood this, you are supposed, to convert your polygon model to a subdivision surface object, then right click it to switch subdiv levels or add a new one with 'refine'.

Now with Maya 2016 Ext1 SP6, the following happens:

Freshly started Maya -> create polygon cube -> Modify / Convert / Polygons to subdiv -> crash

Maya crashes a 100% at this basic operation. So question 1 is: am i the only one with this problem. Is it a known bug or is my installation b0rken?

With Maya 2016 Ext2, i can convert the poly cube to a subdiv object, but when right clicking and selecting 'refine selected' the object gets deselected and nothing else happens, 'Display level' menu shows Level 0 and Level 1, no matter how often i click 'refine selected' and it seems that it doesn't change anything, when i switch between Level 0 and 1.

Through wild clicking i somehow managed to add a Level 2, but i couldn't figure out what i did (and again, switching between the levels did nothing)

Could someone point me in the right direction here? Is this the workflow that i am supposed to use? Any tutorials on the subdiv sculptin in maya topic out there?

Thanx in advance.

[pshwayka · Accepted solution]

It appears that that workflow is not compatible with Viewport 2.0. Change your viewport renderer to Legacy Default Viewport and try again. (It's in the Renderer menu right at the top of your viewport.)

Also, once you have converted your object to a subdivision surface, make sure you have vertices enabled in the attribute editor as shown below...and before you do the "refine selected" command, right-click and make sure you are in vertex selection mode and you have selected the vertices.

It's kind of a flaky workflow...you may decide it's worth it to pay for a few months of a Mudbox subscription.

[hi]

Thanx... again.

Works and i do have a mudbox subscription... thought why use 2 softwares when you can do it in one... better stick with mudbox then and hope they make it useful one day 😉