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How to clean the trash in this mesh?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello

The attached picture shows the problem. All I did was to “make boolean mesh” with 2 subtools; afterwards the resulting mesh came fine except for those weird artifacts on the top that I can’t manage to clean up. Here are the things I tried:

-Using the clip/square curve (I tried them in every possible angle, but it creates more flattened artifacts than it resolves);

-Trim brushes (those don’t accomplish anything, only create new polygroups. That’s weird, sometimes it just trimmed the mesh, as it name implies, now it just creates new polygroups or performs no apparent action in the mesh);

-Smooth the hell out of it (I left only those artifacts unmasked but it creates holes and distorts the mesh below them);

-Deformation menu polishes (It just diminishes a little bit but ).

This is very frustrating, the little time I could’ve spent on modeling I’ve to waste it trying to fix these unexpected weird glitches.

Using Zbrush 2019.1.2 Winx64. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

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#2

Hi Lopan. Sorry you’re having some trouble.

The usual cause of this is trying to remesh/Dynamesh/boolean overly thin or open 2 dimensional geometry in conjunction with an otherwise closed volume. These functions work the best on closed volumes with thickness.

Live Boolean is non-destructive, and does not alter the original subtools the resulting fused subtool was made from. You should be able to adjust or remove the offending geometry from the original subtools and make a new fused mesh without this issue.

If simply adjusting the original tools to remove or alter the offending geometry prior to creating the fused mesh is no longer an option for some reason, you will have to remove and remesh it.

  1. You can use the clip brushes to flatten the geometry flush to the surface then dynamesh it to fuse everything together.

  2. You could use the Trim brushes to cut away the offending geometry, and likewise dynamesh to clean it up.

If you are unable to target the offending polygons to remove them with those brushes, first of all be sure to read up on the various shortcuts for hiding, masking, and polygrouping meshes in Zbrush. The ability to quickly isolate polygons in Zbrush is vital to being able to reach hard to get at polygons, to affect only the polygons you want to affect with a given operation, and to work efficiently in general.

  1. In the meantime though, you could simply cut away the offending polygons with another live boolean operation. Insert a subtraction object into your boolean chain, and line up the cut interactively until you see the problem area disappear.
#3

Spyndel, your solution #3 worked like a charm in less than a min! I was so tired and mad of trying over and over that methods I mentioned that I couldn’t think of nothing else.

I destroyed the undo history when I saved and relaunched and noticed those artifacts only upon closer inspection.

I’m new to Zbrush and 3D in general, I didn’t know about that caveat on remesh/Dynamesh/boolean. Thank you sir!