Fingers duplicate - merge

[Djordr]

I’m on a laptop and the process of making a full body figure is tedious because…I’m on a laptop. When making the hand I tend to make one finger first and duplicate it because I don’t want to redo the same detail for each finger. The problem is that the process of dynameshing a 5 million polygon subdivided mesh so the duplicated fingers attach to the main mesh. Then z remeshing the entire model…reprojecting the detail from a copy of the hands+body that I made before.

This entire process on a crappy laptop takes like 15 min and most of it’s waiting. Z brush also freezes when I reproject or z remesh the model so I can’t tab out because then it crashes. The z remeshing process also isn’t super accurate and often you get artifacts especially on the fingers which because they’re so small aren’t z remeshed very well. So you end up losing the detail on the fingers.

Is there really no faster way to merge an object with another object without having to first dynamesh, zremesh and project the detail back? It’s the one major obstacle that slows down my sculpting experience.

[Doug_Jones]

Why not use the Zmodeler brush and extrude your fingers from the hand? Start with the main form and refine it as you work…

[Altea]

Adding a finger to a model of 5 millions is not the typical Zbrush workflow. Normally you start with relatively low poly structure, solve the main structural elements and then you start to increase detail and subdivisions. The initial structure could be done with Zspheres, a previous model or Dynamesh. But even with Dynamesh there is no point to add detail until you have the global shape more or less as you want it.

If you want more freedom, work in details at same time that structural elements even something like 600.000 polygons in Dynamesh would give you both.

In any case and ignoring what I said above If you have a 5 millions figure and you are adding fingers something that you could check instead to use dynamesh is insert mesh. You can create a polygroup in the area where you want to attach the finger, leave the base of the finger as a hole as set it as a insert brush orienting it pointing to you in the screen, as this will be the origination when inserting it. Finally ctrl and drag in the empty canvas twice to weld the geometry. Eventually you will need a cleaner topology but in certain cases this can be OK, not sure if will work for something so tight as fingers.

I understand that you want to avoid the work of modeling the detail of a finger 5 times, but at the end it is a question of a compromise and probably you should avoid meshes with more than 600.000 polys before trying that type of workflow that you are currently using. It won’t give the detail of a 5 million poly mesh but the speed will be reasonable. And if you are forced to work in that 5 million poly mesh because you have invested too much work think and about working in hands in a separate subtool and when finished merge with the body instead merging individual fingers to the body.

[Djordr]

Just to clarify my workflow is like this:

1. Turn sphere into ribcage, drag it down and make the pelvis.
2. Use zpheres for legs, feet, arms, one finger and the thumb.
3. zremesh
4. Start refining the shape.
5. To get ok detail on the face the model has to be around 4 million polygons.
6. Do the hand last because it’s boring.
7. Seperate the detailed finger from the main mesh.
8. Duplicate it and resize/place the fingers correctly.
9. Duplicate the human figure.
10. Merge the fingers with the main human mesh.
11. Dynamesh and to not lose too much detail make the polycount about as high as the subdivided model.
12. Z remesher guides for the face.
13. Zremesh the entire model fingers and all.
14. Reproject back the detail from the duplicated model and the duplicated fingers.

On a laptop it’s hell and I guess it would be possible to make everything in dynamesh up until it’s time to duplicate the fingers but it’s slow and you haven’t got as good control, you could also make every finger from zspheres but that would mean you’d have to sculpt detail on every finger and try to make them look similar which would be as cumbersome if not more cumbersome. Too bad zbrush has no nice feature to deal with problems like this yet.

[Doug_Jones]

What are you going to do with it after it’s modeled?
It may be necessary to have subtools for the head and arms/hands etc.
Scaling alone won’t hide the fact you duplicated fingers.
You did find this page >> http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/modeling-basics/creating-meshes/zspheres/basic-humanoid/

[Djordr]

After basic detail has been added, fingers and toes I’ll pose her then do the hair properly and do the real detail.
Currently at point 12.

[Thor]

2. Use zpheres for legs, feet, arms, one finger and the thumb.

I think it’s MUCH easier to create all fingers with zspheres.

This totally eliminates the problem.