I’ve been using zModeler to make a cottage, and so far I have a floorplan with walls and doorways. It looks good, but it’s all one big model, with no subtools, and it’s getting hard to work on interior bits of it. How do I split it up to make it more manageable? I’ve tried using polygroups, but with so many parallel faces, grouping by normal gives me tons of parallel polygroups. I’d really like to group individual walls or rooms–3D meshes, not just faces.
I suppose once I have manageable polygroups I could use these as a basis for splitting into many subtools. (They’d stay welded, right?) But I’m having trouble making sensible polygroups in the first place.
OK, I’ve solved my own problem, at least for now. After struggling with the curve-slice brush, it dawned on me that I can just use plain old masking with drag-rect and group by mask. I did that, and now I’ve sliced up my house into many polygroups.
The only remaining challenge is that each time I QMesh a poly, I create a new polygroup. Is there a way to disable that behavior so that the new poly joins the polygroup from which it extruded?
I also seem incapable of using the alt key to create temporary polygroups. I choose Qmesh/single poly; I start pulling; I click alt on a neighboring poly; nothing happens. I suppose I need to have something other than single poly chosen?
Subtools are the tool to use if you have portions of the mesh that can logically be separated, and don’t need to be able to be edited at the same time. Any polygons you need to be able to sculpt on simultaneously should be grouped into the same subtool where Polygroups and visibility shortcuts can be used to help manage the model.
The following Cheat Sheet may be useful for committing those visibility shortcuts to muscle memory, which I recommend doing as soon as possible to greatly improve your ability to quickly isolate sections of a mesh at will.
There are many tools for establishing polygroups. If your model is made up mostly of flat planes like a house would be, the ZModeler> Polygon> Polygroup with the “Flat Island” target is going to be very useful. I’d recommend exploring the other target types there to see what kind of situations they might be useful for.
The Polygon> Polygroup action can be used to both sample (Shift) and reassign (Alt) existing polygroups. When you Qmesh a target, all the extrusions should be the same polygroup unless you change it by tapping Alt. After you have performed your extrusion, simply sample the desired polygroup, and reassign all of the extruded surfaces with a single click by using the “Polygroup All” target.
If you split the geometry into separate subtools, it will no longer be welded. However, if the points at the border stay unchanged, you can merge the sections of mesh back together my merging the subtools down with the “weld” option enabled.
I’m uncertain if you’re describing the correct usage here. You wouldn’t assign a temporary polygroup during a QMesh operation. You would assign them before the operation to define exactly which polygons you want to affect with the next operation.
Are you able to use the Alt key to establish temporary polygroups in any situation? If not, this is a larger problem with something in your operating environment (installation, input device issues, keyboard issue, OS settings, etc.). You would need to contact Pixologic Support for assistance with this.
Thanks for your reply. That cleared up most of my questions. It’s great to know how to sample and apply polygroups, at least at the zModeler level. (I’m not sure how to do that if I’m not using zModeler.) And you’re right, I was not properly using alt to make temporary polygroups. I have it sorted now. I’ve been watching the long ZClassroom series on zModeler; that’s helped.
Is the zModeler brush the one you’d use for a house floor plan with lots of 90 degree angles and straight walls? It seems to be working well so far.
I do have one section that has given me fits. There are holes in the mesh, and I’ve had trouble using the bridge edge action to fill them. I’ve also tried Close Concave or Convex hole, and collapse. But they are all too aggressive. I just want to put a cap on the end of a string of polys with an open end; or fill the fourth wall of a rectangular wall that has three sides only. I’ll watch more edge action tutorials, but I may just redo the troublesome section rather than try to fix it.
The only other issue is that my hand hurts! Using my stylus helps, but even that makes my hand ache after a while. Time for a break.
