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Modeling

The Designer's modeling toolkit is small on purpose. Authoring a skin is not authoring a feature film: most placements are rectangles, ellipses, simple curves, and imported 3D models. The Modeling menu set covers the operations that come up day-to-day, and pushes you out to a dedicated DCC (Maya, Blender, ZBrush) when you need more.

What the Modeling set covers

Tool Section
Lasso Select Lasso selection
Mesh > Inspect Inspect tools
Mesh > Render Part Mask Render part mask
Path > Combine (Union / Intersect / Subtract / Exclude) Path booleans
Arrange > Align / Bring Forward / Send Backward Arrange and align
File > Import > 3D Model Reads .3ds, .obj, .gltf, .fbx

What it does not cover

  • Polygon edit operations (extrude, bevel, subdivision surface).
  • Topology cleanup (re-meshing, retopology).
  • Sculpt-mode displacement.
  • UV unwrapping (the Designer reads existing UVs; it does not re-author them).

For any of the above, model in your tool of choice, export to .gltf or .obj, and import. The from-maya migration guide covers the common workflows.

When the Designer is enough

Most Elysium skins are 2D: a borderless window with shapes, text, images, and animation. The Modeling set's lasso, path booleans, and arrange tools cover that completely.

For 3D placements (Mesh3D), the Designer's role is transfer + preview: pick textures and materials, position lights, run the texture transfer pipelines, render previews. The geometry comes in from a DCC.

Workflow tips

  • Import models early. The earlier the Mesh3D placement exists, the more accurately you can author landmarks, textures, and animation against it.
  • Bake textures with the transfer pipelines as the last step before export. Bakes are expensive to re-run.
  • For 2D-heavy skins, stay in the Modeling menu set; for 3D butterfly-style projects, switch to Rendering (F6) once geometry is locked.

See also