I have a curved mesh that I’m applying an armor patter on using nanomesh:
I remeshed it a few times to make sure the polygons are as square as possible, though its of course not perfect resulting in a bunch of issues using nanomesh, such as these:
As you can see in the middle its pretty okay, but at the edges where its curved things get spaced out wrong, stretched, …
Settings I used are:
fill (with PROP I cant get the pattern to perfectly fit)
align to normal
Help would be appreciated!
Hi @JoJoCa
If you manipulate it while it’s still a NanoMesh then you will get that kind of distortion. You will have to convert it to a mesh before you manipulate it. You can use “One To Mesh” in “Tool > NanoMesh” “Inventory” to convert it.
Sorry I’m not sure what you mean I should do, convert it to a mesh and then what? If I add a nanomesh and dont adjust any of the parameters its all gonna be small and wont fit, do you mean I should individually scale them correctly?
You adjust the NanoMesh to where you want it before you click “One To Mesh”. In order to adjust the NanoMesh, the underlying geometry has to be perfect. You can’t just create a mesh with different polygon sizes and shapes and apply NanoMesh to that. It just won’t work well, especially when your using a complicated shape as the one you are using for the armor. As an example, say you wanted to make a sleeve. You would start with a Cylinder primitive and use “Tool > Initialize” to get the polygons around the outside as square as possible then remove the end caps. Apply your NanoMesh to that and adjust them so they fit perfectly. Now, you would click “One To Mesh” in “Tool > NanoMesh > Inventory”. Now you can manipulate the mesh to the shape you want.
Alternatively, and this would probably be the easiest route, if you want to make an Alpha and use that with UV’s and NoiseMaker, you can select a Plane3D and adjust it to as many polygons you want. All the polygons will be perfectly square and will work really well with NanoMesh. Once you have adjusted the NanoMesh fit, click “One To Mesh”. Now set that mesh on the canvas using Shift to snap it to an orthographic view, then go to “Alpha” palette and click “From Mesh” to create your alpha. Use the “Size” slider to get the size you want then click “OK”. Save the Alpha. I hope this will clear it up for you a bit better.
NanoMesh isn’t something that I have used extensively and maybe somebody else might have a better idea on how it works best. I’m sure there are lots of tutorials on Youtube as well. Good Luck!
Not a direct answer but I’ve seen your earlier post. I’d take a look at Micropoly. If the pattern doesn’t exist in the stock micropoly set, then it might be easy to make.
Michael Pavlovich covers Micropoly in depth in parts 039-045 of What’s New in ZBrush 2021.
Advantage of micropoly is that is literally replaces the underlying polygon with the Micropoly so there are no local orientation issues. If the base Micropoly is constructed properly then it will be complete welded too. I’ve used it some time ago to create snake scales.
That works pretty well, the problem is my alpha turns out pretty pixelated, and for it to be a good resolution I need a crazy amount of polygons
Hi @JoJoCa ,
Well, crazy amounts of polygons are what ZBrush does, so maybe the amount isn’t that crazy? Features like HD Geo can also drastically increase the resolution potential for the purpose of high frequency alpha detail beyond the normal program limits. Just remember that ultra-dense meshes are always more challenging to work with from a technical perspective, so creating this type of detail is the last thing you want to do in a process. You’re working toward the export of a map, not to do a lot of additional work on that mesh.
Re: Nanomesh.
The problems you’re experiencing there are inevitable for a mesh with non-uniform polygons. Note that you would need a checkerboard polygroup pattern in this scenario, but you seem to have that covered.
The thing that often solves a lot of nanomesh issues is keeping in mind that you dont need to, and often can’t, draw out all the polygons at once with the same settings on complicated meshes. It may require you to go section by section and to finesse certain areas.
In this situation I might useDynamic Subdivision> Micropoly as Tober8man suggested. However you may need to change the configuration of your geometry to work well with that feature.
You are going to have to make some sacrifices somewhere if your computer can’t handle it. Like breaking down parts into more subtools. Doing that, you can add more details per subtool. Did you max out the Alpha size to 2048 x 2048 to get the most detail?
Yeah, I changed it to the max. I’ll give the other solutions with nano mesh a try,.same for micromesh. Though maybe the easiest way for me right now is making the model I have again (not a lot of work) but flat, put the armor on it and then bend, for the best results.
Probably what I should have done from the beginning, but I’ll keep that in mind for future projects 
If you use Dynamics during the “bending” step, then with the appropriate settings, polygon sizes will be well preserved so you’ll get less stretching. That’ll help when you apply Nanomesh or Micropoly. So, for example, you could drape a low poly pauldron over a shoulder, or use the various Cloth brushes or Cloth Transform Gizmo to deform or tweak shapes as required. Dare I say it, Michael Pavlovich covers Dynamics in detail.
