Merge obscured geometry

[AC2015]

Hello!

I have a shoe that has spirals over ties.

The entire shoe is a single subtool, but the spirals and the ties are separate UV groups.

ZBrush produces weird UVs, so I would like to merge these spirals with the ties.

The ties beneath the spirals don’t need to have their own geometry because they’re obscured anyways.

How could I merge these geometries?

Even if I click “Delete UV”, ZBrush creates separate UV islands for the spirals and the ties.

Thank you!

Edit: I tried Dynamesh, but at low resolution I don’t get enough details, and at high resolution I can’t UV it because ZBrush freezes.

[AC2015]

I solved it the following way:

I set a resolution of 3000 for the Dynamesh, then I clicked “Dynamesh” twice.
It asked me if I wanted to freeze subdivisions.

Converting to Dynamesh welded the geometry as I wished.

Then I clicked Dynamesh again to deactive the Dynamesh, and I got “real geometry” again.

Then I clicked “Freeze SubDivision Levels” again to bring back the subdivision levels.

Because even at the lowest SubDiv I was still too high poly, I used ZRemesher to bring it to 10K points.

I exported the original hi poly model as an obj along with the original UVs.

Then I exported the lo poly 10 k obj without the UVs.

I loaded both models in Knald, and it produced a great normal map.