ZBrushCentral

Getting tired of Zbrush crashing... this time on Extract mesh

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I am having some trouble with zbrush and to be honest I have done for years. I recently updated to 4r7 in the hopes that the 64bit variant would fix my zbrush woes but they are still there, and they still are as spontaneous and unhelpful as ever.

I am working on a model with 4 sub divs, 5mil polys which has been merged into one subtool. It is a base mesh for a character which I have been working on but now whenever I try and extract (whether at sub div 1 or 4) i get a crash with unsurprisingly no information as to why.

I have had problems in the past (still happens) where it would crash on saving and I have lost a great deal of work and time from this, but this is the first time this has happened on extract. It happens without fail on this model every time which is frustrating.

I’m at my wits end trying to fall in love with zbrush again but the constant crashes urge me to look elsewhere for my 3d sculpting software, which I don’t want to do at all. Sometimes I feel like zbrush wears the trousers in this relationship and she’s a stern wife, whether I want to use zbrush is irrelevant, if the wife… err Zbrush says no then I best do something else :stuck_out_tongue:

If anyone can offer some advice on how I may find some logs or fix this please help a wayward 3d artist :frowning:

Spec:
Zbrush 4r7 64
Win 8.1 (recent reformat of whole computer within the last 3 months)
16gb ram (zbrush window always shows around 7gb free and 1.5 in use, scratch discs 800-1000+, even when crash occurs)
AMD bulldozer 6 core
R9 290 4gb GDDR5
ASUS Sabertooth 2.0 Motherboard

#2

Hey Nexus, try not to get too disheartened, Zbrush can be fickle at times, but the perseverance is worth it in the end.

As for your extract problem, what’s your smooth setting, if it’s high, try setting it to zero, and work up in small increments. Is it an open or closed circle (hard or soft polish) to the right of the smooth setting. Try set to closed if it’s open.

How many visible subtools do you have when you press extract, if many then turn off visibility for all but the single tool your extracting from, it will put less pressure on ZB when previewing the extract.

Could you post your extract setting you’re using when ZB crashes (Double, Corner Quads to Tris, Thin Border)

Does it crash on all masked parts of your mesh, or just one section. Does it have UV’s, is Noise turned on.

Have you tried dropping down to subdiv 1, delete higher subdivs, export this mesh, and before you import it, go to Tool > Import and set the Weld points tolerance slider up in small increments on import, to see if there are any stray points.
Then mask a section and try an extract. If it extracts ok, then re-export this(fixed) mesh, turn the import weld points tolerance slider back to zero. Switch to your original subtool and press import, and select the adjusted mesh. It will update your geo while maintaining your subdivs.

Also you say you’ve merged the mesh, did you have the Weld button on when you merged them.

Hope some of these might help with your issue, post some feed-back.

Always save new versions :]

Cheers ~ Bangers

#3

It crashes for me when I press A on a model that has only zspheres. Apparently it doesn’t like small zspheres - I believe I might have created them by mistake by not dragging the mouse after the click to create a new one. It’s reproduceable 100% (I submitted a ticket). 4R7 is less tolerant than 4R6 this way.