Hi all
So, I’ve been sculpting for a long while with physical media, and when I made the move to Zbrush one of the features I came to love the most was the ability to have multiple subtools, merge them together with dynamesh or booleans, and make new single-tool models.
However. I’ve recently started preparing a line of multi-part models for sale and am realizing: although I’ve had things printed before, this is the first time I’ve done them at a larger scale (54mm instead of 32mm).
To me, the MOST important thing to having a nice finished product is the cleanliness and clarity. I want each line and gap and joint to read clearly and remain as sharp as possible through the printing process.
Unforunately, it seems the methods I’ve been using until now are failing me and I need some help.
My typical workflow is to sculpt a bunch of separate pieces (anatomy, cloth, belts, armor, etc), layer them together and then either merge with booleans (to make a watertight mesh) or, at first, I tried dynameshing, retopo and then project. The dyna-reto-project was WAY too tedious and took far too long on my PC and made me feel I was doing all my work twice, as I had to do so much cleanup of the projected mesh.
The second, and latest way, of booleans, is awesome! … until i need to split the model. Part of the issue is I sculpt all in one piece, and then split it to print afterwards. However, somewhere between either using Slice or Split to Parts and running Close Holes, the topology has become so bad that I can no longer safely edit or fix sculpt errors.
For instance: say I have a hand that I want separate from the arm, and the hand is holding a sword. The joints in-between the fingers and the sword grip lose resolution and get all triangle-y when I try to work with them after the boolean operation. That is, it usually takes me multiple booleans, and each one makes it successively worse.
So:
Boolean all parts together
Slice parts for printing
Boolean-add plugs
Boolean-subtract plugs from main pieces
Close holes/fix mesh
I cannot think of or find any other way to add plugs, slice joints, AND somehow merge all the separate subtools in order to have a complete, printable, watertight mesh that also keeps my detail.
If I dyna-retopo-project after the operations, I still lose tons of detail and I HATE having to go back and resculpt stuff.
The initial sculpts are perfect! So beautiful. It’s only when I go to slice and prep them for printing that they go crappy, and the more I get them ready for print the more I hate them, and it makes me very unmotivated to work on any more because I know those will just get ruined too -_-
So. Any advice on making watertight meshes out of multiple subtools without losing detail or resculpting the entire thing for 3d printing would be very helpful!
I know some people just sculpt the separate pieces (hand, body, etc) with the plugs already in place from the beginning, before adding detail, and I guess I could try that but it would be learning a whole new method.