Subdividing without losing masks

- Here's a problem you might run into. Let's say that you spent some quality time painting a mask just the way you want it, but after you're done, you realize that the model needs more subdivision levels for the fine detail you want to sculpt. If you subdivide, the mask will cause the subdivision to happen only in the unmasked portions of the model, which actually results in some messy geometry that you might not want. In this video, I'll show you how to do it right. So if I want to sculpt some fine detail in the rest of the model, you'll notice that the resolution's kind of low, so I sort of did this backwards.

I should have subdivided first, but I already put the time into painting this mask, so I don't want to have to redo that. If I were to go to Geometry and click Divide, and then turn on my wireframe, you'll see what happens is that the teeth, because they're masked, don't get subdivided, and then it creates a messy geometry, and it doesn't actually create more subdivision levels, it just subdivides the part that wasn't masked. So let's hit Control-Z to undo that. Instead, what you can do is go to Dynamic Subdivision, turn on Dynamic, and then apply it.

So now we have our subdivision levels and we retained that mask. Okay, so pretty simple. One extra little trick here is that this might result in a really blurry mask, and if you want that to be a bit sharper, one thing that you could do is go down to Masking, and click on Sharpen Mask. You might want to click that a couple times to get a really sharp mask. Okay, and there you have it. We kept our mask and we were also able to add subdivision levels to the model.