ZBrushCentral

Can't reconstruct subdivision levels

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey guys

When i first started on my mesh, i had no idea that i had to save/leave the lower subdivision levels.

It seems like i made a huge mistake back then.

However when i try now to reconstruct the lower subdivision levels then it’s telling me that my mesh inclused triangles.
So i’m not able to recreate any lower subdivisions.

Is there any way to reconstruct them without to destroy too much of my mesh?

Because the division level is currently too high for beeing imported into Autodesk Maya. It’s just laggy as hell even with an i7 extreme CPU and 12GB DDR3 Rams.
I can’t really work with Maya like that.

It would be great if someone could help me out in this case or in these cases.
The more details you guys can give me on what to do, the bigger is your help.

Thanks in advance,
Cheers Everade

#2

does your mesh have triangles? what is your poly count? do you have a mesh that you imported in when you started sculpting?

#3

also do you have uv’s?

“Reconstruct Subdiv: Given a model being displayed at its lowest subdivision level, this attempts to construct a lower-level model such that subdivision of that model would give the model currently being displayed. If this is successful, the displayed level 1 model becomes the level 2 model, and the newly created model becomes the level 1 model. Reconstruction of a lower-level model cannot always be done. UV’s are needed to do this, so you may need to go to Texture->EnableUV’s->AUV.”

#4

does your mesh have triangles?
Yes i guess so, here’s a screenshot:
http://www7.pic-upload.de/10.02.11/dcq7jdddbmiv.png

what is your poly count?
ActivePoints: 697,310
TotalPoints: 12.224 Mil

do you have a mesh that you imported in when you started sculpting?
No i’ve started with Zbrush from Zero.

also do you have uv’s?
I had no idea what UV’s even are till now.
I’ve just checked it what it is and tried also what you said.
However it’s still saying:
Reconstruction result: Mesh contains triangles. operation cancelled.

#5

If you have any triangles it is impossible to reconstruct any lower sudivisions.
You’ll have to retoplogise your model to get a new topology either in zbrush or some other modelling application. You can then project your high res mesh onto this new lower poly mesh.

#6

Is there no way to find and fix all the triangles instead of remaking the whole topology?
Maybe in Maya or any other software?

I’ve started today with remaking the topology, but it’s taking too long by hand, i seriously don’t have the time for that anymore even if i wanted do it.

I’ve also tried to reduce the polygon count by using the division tool offeren with zbrush, it helped allot to get it loaded in maya, but it’s not really the best option.

#7

Is there no way to find and fix all the triangles instead of remaking the whole topology?

Even if you fix the triangles it still doesn’t mean the mesh is suitable for you to reconstruct. Reconstruct is just the same as reversing the dividing process so you would have to have a mesh which could have been created by a lower res one being subdivided by the division algorithm.

#8

if you have maya you can take it into that,
then just goto ‘clean up’ in mesh or edit i think and it will do it all for u :slight_smile:

#9

ask someone with mudbox2012 to reconstruct.
should work there.

#10

I made all my models from Zspheres, with Adaptive Skin, but having the same problem with triangles, because the button for “allow triangles” is yellow (on) but is not operable (shaded over). This is very frustrating, since in my inexperience I did not save lower rez models and UV maps, but cannot reconstruct lower subdiv levels nor export into other apps.

Also, when extracting mesh for subtools, the “triangles” button is always on, by default, and if I don’t remember to click it off, there are more %$#@^&* triangles to deal with.

Blah.

~Marcia Cash, Traveler in Thyme