Mirror Modifier

If you sculpt that has symmetrical halves, you can cut down on some of the work by using a mirror modifier.

Usually it’s best to create the modifier when you first start your sculpt, because you will need to get rid of multires before you can add it.  But you CAN add multires back after you’ve created the mirror modifier.

So what I do is create the sculpt mesh, then go to multires level 1, then click on “Apply Multires” to get rid of Multires.  Then you can select all the vertices of one half of your sculpt (excluding the points in the very center) and delete them. Then, in the Editing Buttons, find the Modifiers tab and add a Mirror modification.

Then, find which axis you need to mirror on. If it’s side-to-side, it’s probably X. Top-to-bottom will be Z. Also, check the image mapping too.  If the vertices on the image are split side-to-side, you will need to “Mirror U.”  If they are split top to bottom, you need to “Mirror V.”

You can also select “Do Clipping” to keep the center vertices from straying from that center line.  Then there’s a small round button that you can select so that the mirrored vertices and edges will appear in edit mode instead of being a ghost mirror.

Once you have everything set up how you want it, you can edit one half of your mesh and the other will stay perfectly symmetrical.

Note: If you’re familiar with precision sculpting, remember that your grid locations fall on values ranging from 0 to 255.  That being said, the true center of your sculptie is actually 127.5, which isn’t a valid location.  So you can never actually have a line of vertices on the true center of your sculptie.

For this reason, when you’re using a mirror modifier in conjunction with precision sculpts, when you apply the modifier, the sculpt mesh will be 2.56 along your mirrored axis instead of 2.55.  You need to take half of your vertices and move them in by one grid space before you snap them to the grid, or your grid spacing will be off.

If you’re picky about the sculpt being perfectly symmetrical, the other option is to make the axis 2.54 and then when you bake the sculpt map be sure to take off a value for the correct color.