ZBrushCentral

Mesh 'fireflies'

Hello Zbrushers.

I have this odd phenomenon where it appears like I have floating polygons when I boolean my mesh, but they don’t in fact appear to be real.

  • If I change the camera angle, they are no longer visible unless viewed over the booleaned mesh
  • if I try and split the mesh by parts into separate subtools, it says that there are no parts to be split

https://customer-j17s2a79x74awquz.cloudflarestream.com/022ff9bd69ffcc51357b4689354fa2a8/watch

Has anyone encountered this behaviour before?

I should add that to create this mesh, I merged two high poly meshes together. I then ran dynamesh, and also decimation master.

I am hoping for it to be a single, continuous water-tight mesh

Hello @arumiat ,

I had a look at your movie and it appears that you are in Live Boolean preview mode. The real time Live Boolean preview is prone to some display issues that may not actually be present in the eventual geometry. Go ahead and create the actual boolean mesh as real geometry, then switch off Live Boolean mode to make sure you are actually viewing real geometry.



Again it’s important that you’re looking at real geometry here and not the Boolean preview.

However, if the issue persists even in the completed geometry, this would be a sign of floating or disconnected polygons. Polygons in ZBrush are invisible from the non-normal facing side unless Tool> Display Properties > Double (sided) is active. Go ahead and switch that on, and it should prevent the polygons from disappearing when you rotate the camera. Geometry can become twisted around and complicate the normal facing of polygons, which may appear to be “holes” in the model unless Double is active.

As to why this might happen, it could be due to the way you are combining or Dynameshing the geometry. Live Boolean allows users to recombine geometry in very complex and ambitious ways. It is inevitable that sometimes this process will result in errors that must be corrected. You may want to review this article for potential Live Boolean issues.

Dynamesh will produce fragmenting geometry in some situations. It requires a mesh that is a closed volume with a minimal degree of thickness to work. Overly thin areas or areas that are read as an open 2D surface may begin to disintegrate, which will produce geometry that is problematic for many other functions.

After you recombine geometry with either of these features, be sure to check the mesh for problems with Tool> geometry> Mesh Integrity> Check mesh. Those types of problems should be corrected before you continue to work with the mesh.



It is also possible you are seeing these artifacts as a result of your mesh topology. Ideal topology for high res sculpting is evenly distributed quads, as close to square shaped as possible. If your geometry is dense and heavily triangulated, containing a lot of poles, it may produce these display artifacts. However, they don’t really represent any defect in the actual mesh. They are a cosmetic quirk of that type of geometry.

:slight_smile:

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