I have a somewhat complex, high-poly model (see attachment) that I am trying to prep for 3D printing. Somehow, the groups got all messed up. I had the inside wall nicely separated from the outside wall. I figured, well, Zbrush has a HUGE variety of ways to do things, there’s got to be some way for me to separate out the inside again. NOT THAT I’M !@#$%^&*ING AWARE OF. I seriously want to beat my head into the wall. I’m not even joking.
Here is the litany of problems I encountered:
My mesh is 2.8 million polys. I do not want to decimate it at this juncture and shift+ctrl+xing out the inside would take FOREVER.
Zremesher does not want to remesh this model for some reason. My hope was to remesh, make multi-res, project detail, hide all except a few faces on the inside wall, go lowest sub-division, and shift+ctrl+x away to my heart’s content. Then I could mask that off, ctl+w, and DONE! NOPE!
Dynamesh and project all do strange things to the topology which I have already gone through painstaking lengths to correct. And anyway, Zremeshing doesn’t seem to be working for some reason.
Mask by… NOPE. There are no masking options that would solve my problem.
Polygroups… group by NOPE! Tried group by normals and got nothing. Tried other group-by options and again, doesn’t seem to work. Group by normals worked once before but now, it doesn’t want to work again. It would be nice if there was a group by masked seams …or something …option. Like, say I mask out the edges of a cube then hit the theoretical group by masked seams option. This would create a separate group for everything unmasked. So each side of the cube would be its own group. This would perfectly solve my problem. I could just draw an “O” around the base and Zbrush would make a separate group for inside the O and outside the O. No?
Polypaint! I’ll try polypaint! I can polypaint the inside and group by polypaint! NOPE. NOPE. NOPE! When I try to paint the inside, it paints all over the outside walls too. Backface masking does NOT work. No matter what I do, I end up painting nearly as much outside the model as inside.
By this point I’ve been at it for hours and I am legitimately ready to start banging my head on a table. So I figured, ok, let me cut a border along the bottom (see attachment, third image, red line). Maybe Zbrush will let me separate my mesh by distinct shells. NOPE. Really? Zbrush, the program that does everything- mows my lawn, cleans windows, brings me breakfast in bed, and makes a mean margarita… doesn’t… have… a select shell function? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Anyway, to sum this up: I need to separate the model along that red line. How do I do it without utilizing Zremesher, decimation, or Dynamess? I’m just about at wit’s end here. I looked everywhere else for solutions and I found nothing. Normally, I am the biggest, most flamboyant, shameless Zbrush-cheerleading fangirl out there but tonight, I’m trying to stave off the impulse to buy another copy for the express purpose of watching with malicious glee as I set my microwave to “popcorn” and watch it burn.
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