ZBrushCentral

Remeshing issue

Hi, so I’m very new to 3d sculpting and even newer to Zbrush (I started out in blender like a month or 2 ago), and I’ve been loving how easy the Zremesher seemed to work until recently. I’ve been trying to create eyelids following a little tutorial someone made for me where I mask out the lid shapes, extract them, and then Zremesh them to a low poly in order to get a very simple shape. However whenever I Zremesh the the extracted shapes it isn’t working properly and creates what I’ve been told are little artifacts, rather than actually lowering the poly count from what I can tell. I tried creating a new sphere and repeating the process a few times with similar results. Here is an example. Can anyone identify what’s happening? What am I doing wrong?

Hello Rebecca

I can’t identify the problem without seeing the mesh before and after trying to ZRemesh it. It would be more helpful to see the polyframe of the ZRemeshed mesh, so we can see what the topology is doing. Something is likely problematic with the mesh in that location.

  • Make sure your mesh is fully visible prior to ZRemeshing, and that there aren’t any hidden polygons.. This would cause partial re-meshing and atypical results.

  • Make sure your mesh is completely welded. ZRemesher does not fuse geometry together like Dynamesh. If some polygons aren’t welded to each other, ZRemesher won’t weld them and they will separate during the ZRemesh process.

  • There could be something problematic with the mesh you are extracting from, resulting in a problematic extract. Try performing a Dynamesh on the source mesh to clean up the topology before performing the extract. Remember you can always duplicate a subtool quickly if you want to experiment with different topology while preserving the original.

  • Enable Solo Mode (located in the Transform menu by default, and on the side of many UI viewports). This ensures you’re only looking at the actual subtool that’s being remeshed, and not getting confused by any other visible subtools that might be overlapping.

  • Also, please upload full resolution screenshots. Do not reduce the size of the screenshot.


One note. In most circumstances ZBrush works best on a mesh that is a closed 3d volume with thickness. 2d open meshes do not perform well in ZBrush–you can’t use them with Dynamesh, and it is difficult to sculpt near open borders. Avoid working on meshes in this form in Zbrush when possible.

Try extracting your mesh with some thickness and see if it works better. Also be aware of the Topology brush for quickly extracting much simpler and deliberately drawn topology if you want a simple topology without the ZRemesher trial and error.