How do I cut an opening in a mesh without deleting faces?

Hi,

I have a head that I have sculpted. Now I want to be able to part the lips in order to animate them. Is there an easy way to do that?

Basically what I want to do is split the mesh along the edges I’ve outlined below, so that the faces below the split can move without affecting the faces above the split. Basically, imagine taking a screen (a real piece of screen, like you’d have in your front door) and slicing a cut in it with a real knife. That’s what I want to do.

The solution I’ve come up with so far is very ugly - delete all the faces above the edges, re-add the vertical edges from those faces, split the edges in two, delete the top half of them, create new faces, then adjust the top edge of each face to match up with the upper lip.

There must be an easier way!

Attachments


Place your cursor to upper or bottom side of the selection and press V key.

The basic work flow to modeling the face after sculpting is create new, simpler, good mesh flow model by Retopologizing.