Editing Subtool advice needed

[system]

Hi all, I’m working on a ring at the moment. It is made up of 2 subtools, The body of the ring and a peace symbol as the decoration. The body was made using a cylinder, then I used the Maskcure brush to get the shape, then extracted it.
The symbol is another cylinder edited to the size I wanted. I then used the Zmodeler brush to extrude the shape inside the cylinder (Green section in the pic).
I want to isolate the Green section so any changes I make to the outer ring (pink) will not effect it.
I am not sure how to go about this? Any help and advice would be very welcome

Attachments

[SKYWAYS128]

The only way I can think of is to duplicate the whole peace symbol as an overlapping subtool clone (subtools > duplicate), and then hide the whatever changes to the green part that results from tinkering with the original one inside the clone, and vice versa. At the end of the day, when you dynamesh and unify the the ring and peace symbol, both the clone and original mesh just gets turned into one solid mesh anyway.

So, in point form:

1. Duplicate peace symbol

2. Make necessary changes

3. Use Inflate/clay/standard (zsub) to hide any structural changes inside the clone. Inversely, you can also do the same to hide any parts of the clone into altered original. You can even clip/trim off unwanted parts of the clone or original mesh if necessary.

4. Merge down and Dynamesh to make everything a solid mesh. This is necessary if you plan on 3d-printing it, to ensure that it’s “watertight”.

[system]

Once again, many thanks Sky.
I’m getting there slowly, its gonna take time but I have patience and a appetite to learn all I can

[Doug_Jones]

Masking objects make changing them impossible until the mask is cleared.

[SKYWAYS128]

@RobbieX: No worries, man! I’ve still got lots to learn about ZB myself, but this is what ZBC is all about, helping others if and when you can.

@Doug: I think I’ll go smack myself in the head for not thinking of using the mask brush!

But just a tiny addition to Doug’s much better method. Make sure the mask is set to a higher sharpness and that the mesh is relatively high-poly. Otherwise, there might be artifacts on the borders of the mask. While it’s just a tiny issue that you can fix with the smooth brush, if your mesh particularly “sensitive” to reshaping, it could cause a bit of extra work trying to shape everything back to the way you want it.

I usually use the cloning method in certain “sensitive and detailed” meshes because it’s easier to retain the shape of the parts that are hard to reshape if they are nudged out of place. Depending on the changes you plan to make, as long at it’s not too drastic, masking is definitely the better way to do about it.