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How can I add thickness to this mesh?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi!

I try add thickness to the mesh below - it’s a plane that will be base for the 3d printed figure.

The problem is, when I try with extruding it destroys mesh where the font and cylinder are. Is there any way of doing a thickness for that kind of topology?

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Thanks!

#2

Hi @MichaelNovaczewski

There are several issues here, and the easiest thing to do will be to backtrack a little, and possibly do a few things over.

  1. The radial topology would not have been my first choice for an object that is mostly flat and square. You can work with it, but a grid of square quads would have produced more manageable topology.
  1. Trying to add thickness to the base after you have fused the cylinder to it is going to return poor results. I would advise eliminating that section of geometry (if you dont have an earlier version before the two have been fused), repairing the topology, and then adding thickness to the cylinder and the base separately until you get the results you want with each. Then fuse them.
  1. The text is trickier…the type of topology generated on text is problematic for some operations unless re-meshed–and that may take some effort. I would recommend making sure the silhouette of the text you’re importing or creating is already the desired thickness, either by using a bold font or using a vector editing program. There will be a limit to how far you can extrude the surfaces on the sides before deformities start to happen.

  • Still, I don’t fully understand what’s going on with the text–it shouldn’t be quite that bad. Are you extruding other surfaces at the same time?

  • If you don’t strictly need the low poly topology–you’re working for print, correct?–then all that text can be stamped in as alphas at high poly, without having to worry about topology. It is much easier to alter 2d silhouettes in an image editor.

  • You can try running the text throughZRemesher with the keep groups option enabled, to remesh it into something more useable, but it may take a bit of trial and error or manual clean up.

  1. Finally, there’s more than one way to extrude in Zbrush. If extruding along the poly normals isn’t returning good results, try extruding only in one direction with Gizmo or the Transpose action lines. Not applicable to the text, but maybe useful for the base.
#3

Thank you @Spyndel ! You always gave more than I need :slight_smile:

Yes, it’s for printing and YES it will be easer if I first make the base thicker and than add a text and a knob to the high poly mesh or just boolean it.

The text above is already extruded and beveled on the flat base with a lot of messy topology. this is why it probably got messed.

I will work on it again :slight_smile: Thank you again for a gold support.

All the best,
Michael