ZBrushCentral

Can't Retop My Broken Mesh

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey!

I have an issue where my exported .fbx object won’t be re-topologized in the normal fashion. It’s like when you have an extracted clothing item and fail to use the back-face mask and the opposing mesh surface is crushed into the one you’re working on, or something like that.
The object looks fine (more or less) in Maya apart from subtle black decolourisation on the surface from certain angles. The problem comes, when I make the surface ‘live’ to use Quad Draw on it. The retop or low res seems to sit just under the surface of the hi res instead of on it and QD stops functioning in those areas.
I think my Zbrush high poly has a kind of multi surface. Even using Zremesher and re-exporting doesn’t help completely. I can patch up the bits of the low poly manually (once ‘live’ surface is switched off) but it’s time consuming and the broken surface negatively affects any ambient occlusion maps I try and make thereafter.
I will just add, these objects are clothing items that began life masked / extracted from a primary sub-tool. I can’t be sure I didn’t switch off Dynamesh on that sub-tool I extracted from beforehand, could that be how I’ve messed up my high res before exporting to Maya?

#2

Hello @Christiana_X

That sounds odd! Unfortunately, I couldnt do anything but make some vague guesses from your description–for instance your mesh could contain sections of overlapping geometry. We would need to be able to examine the mesh and what you are doing with it in greater detail.

If you are a licensed ZBrush user, you can start a conversation over at Pixologic Support, and submit the mesh for examination. We would be able to quickly spot any immediately apparent issues that might be difficult to describe in a forum post.

Otherwise, you will probably need to document the issue much more thoroughly with screenshots of the mesh in ZBrush for other users to get an idea of what is happening.

Good luck!

#3

Apologies, Spyndel.

I don’t know how I managed to miss your reply. So pleased you did.

Okay, re: conversation. I am a licensed user so will prep the sub-tool I was referring to and ping it over to ‘support’ as you’ve suggested.

Sorry if my description wasn’t adequate.

C.

#4

After thought!

So, if this was the case (which having probably not used the back face mask when I should have, means I probably pressed one surface of geo into another)

Could overlapping geometry within the object create a problem for ‘Quad Draw’ in the effected areas, then?

C.