Relax / tighten / smooth the flow of an edge?

[arumiat]

Hi Zbrush Community

I am not sure exactly of the terminology for the thing that I am trying to do.

I have been pushing and pulling a thin piece of geometry to achieve the correct overall flow. This has left me with an uneven edge to the geometry however.

I’d like to relax / smooth / tighten this edge somehow. I’ve attached two images - the first of how the edge looks (wavy)

the second of how I would like the flow of the mesh edge to be (a taught smooth curve / line)

Any insight greatly appreciated,
A

[Spyndel]

Hi @arumiat,

I think in this specific situation I would do the following.

1. Hold down Shift+ Ctrl, then click on the Brush selector button. This will allow you to select the active selection brush from a list of only those brushes.

2. Select the "Clip Curve" brush. This will allow you to draw out exactly the curve you’d like to flatten the mesh along in screen space when you hold down Shift+ Ctrl. You can add multiple “bend points” to the curve as you draw it out so you can get exactly the contour you’d like. Tapping Alt while you draw the curve will insert a soft bend at that point. Double tapping Alt will insert a hard bend point.

3. This will flatten the mesh to machine perfection along that curve. However it will also compress the geometry in that area, making it difficult to work with for other operations. Resurface the mesh with Dynamesh or a ZRemsher+Projection process to redistribute the topology. Then you can manually smooth that edge as desired to make it softer and more organic looking.

Good luck!

[arumiat]

Thanks as ever @Spyndel .

I tried this method but am getting some odd results, any ideas?

[Spyndel]

That looks like a Symmetry conflict. Disable Symmetry and either mask or delete the mesh on the other side of the axis. Then mirror the mesh to the other side with Mirror & Weld once you get the results you want.

A note that Mirror & Weld only works in one direction. In some cases you may first need to flip the mesh to the other side of the axis (Tool> deformation> Mirror), then use M&W (Tool> Geometry> Modify Topology> Mirror and Weld.

[arumiat]

Awesome, thank you, tomorrow I will try!

[arumiat]

Worked beautifully @Spyndel . Thanks for your fast response as always.

As a last followup, as it cuts the mesh so nicely, I’m left with a lot of 90 deg angles almost on the sides where the cuts were made. Any recommendations for approaches to smoothing these out, aside from just the smooth brush?

[Spyndel]

Hi @arumiat

@arumiat

Any recommendations for approaches to smoothing these out, aside from just the smooth brush?

The clip brush compresses the geometry, which is why I recommended remeshing this with Dynamesh or otherwise. The more densely packed points are on a mesh, the more it will resist smoothing. Redistributing the points should make that area easier to smooth.

There are many options to smooth or soften a mesh, but the issue here is that you also have some fine detail that will be affected by any kind of global approach. The smooth brush would be one way to locally smooth that area.

However, you could also mask that area, invert the mask, and try one of the following:

1. Tool> Deformation> Polish. This will result in a smoothing of the unmasked area while preserving the detail on the masked areas. Tool> Deformation> Smooth may also work, but this is most useful for lower resolution meshes as higher res meshes may see little effect.

2. Tool> Geometry> Tessimate. Increasing the size of the polygons in that area will both tend to soften the form as well as make it much more responsive to smoothing. The mesh can then be subdivided (clear masking first or it will only locally subdivide) to smooth it and reduce the faceted appearance of any large polygons. It can then be Dynameshed again to redistribute the geometry to make it suitable for sculpting and unify the appearance of the mesh.

Those approaches have the benefit of applying the smoothing effect uniformly to the masked area, whereas the smooth brush may produce inconsistent results with the human hand. Either approach may be prefereable in a given situation.