Subdivision always messes up - how should I get around this?

[JTG]

Hi - so I don’t know if it’s my work flow issue or whatever else but I feel Zbrush is very limited due to it’s ability to let “subdivision levels” get in its way to do most things.

For example - I am working on a bird statue with open wings, which is made of one tool that forms the body and its wings, and another subtool that is its feathers. My plan was to align the feathers along the wing and in the end, merge it.

However, depending on which part of the wing I am trying to attach the feathers, I need it to bend a little, curve a little…and all that. Small adjustments. So I found out the bend command. Looks like a relatively straightforward command.

Great! Only not, because it tells me to “freeze or delete subdivision levels”. So I froze it and bent it just a little and voila…my subdivision levels are messed up when turned back on.

This subdivision issue practically hinders me from doing anything in Zbrush.

With subdivision, you can’t modify your tool. Modify your tool, your subdivision goes berserk and bye bye tool.

I can only make sense of this by concluding that “you should not ‘divide’ your tool while sculpting until the very end of the process”

Which seems odd because I’ve seen numerous tutorial videos recommending dividing to smooth the mesh out while sculpting - yes, I know overdoing is an issue though.

At any rate, so can I not transform like bend or some such, if I’ve divided the tool’s mesh? Any guidance would be much appreciated.

[tobor8man]

Without knowing exactly what was done, can’t say why freezing subdivisions messes things up for you. Regardless, one way forward is to Geometry:Delete Lower (subdivisions), run your gizmo deformer, and then Geometry:Reconstruct Subdiv. As long as you have not introduced new topology into the mesh with the Gizmo Deformer then you’ll get your subdivisions back without a problem. So avoid any of the Gizmo Deformers like Slice or Subdivide. Bend Arc or Deformers are fine as they’ll just move existing topology around in space.

Search Michael Pavlovich’s YT channel for more details.

[Spyndel]

@JTG

Hi - so I don’t know if it’s my work flow issue or whatever else but I feel Zbrush is very limited due to it’s ability to let “subdivision levels” get in its way to do most things.

Hi @JTG,

This is confusing for some users because of the way that the differing tools have developed together over time. However I want to assure you that subdivision levels are a feature, not a bug, and are very useful for reaching the highest level of surface detail ZBrush is capable of.

It may seem that they are getting in the way, but in this case it simply means you are working with subdivision levels at a stage in your work where they are not as useful.

The tools in ZBrush can generally be divided into two categories.

1. Tools for quickly shaping or developing form which generally are limited to working at a single level of subdivision. These types of tools include IM brushes, Sculptris Pro, Dynamesh, and Live Boolean. They are most useful in the earlier stages of mesh development when you are rapidly changing the form in substantial ways. They become less useful when you have a stable form and are no longer making frequent, drastic changes to the mesh.

2. The traditional subdivision toolset for working with multi-res meshes that have multiple levels of subdivision. A mesh in this form is necessary for the best results sculpting fine surface detail, as well as for posing the mesh or creating and exporting textures.

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While there is no one “right” way of working, artists generally use the form shaping tools earlier in the work for the mesh, to create the basic form on which to sculpt finer detail. I like to think of it as creating a quick and dirty low quality “scaffolding” on which to then build a permanent multi-resolution mesh on top of. The multi res mesh will have a clean, low poly base made out of well-distributed quad topology, and multiple levels of subdivision. There’s generally little point in creating geometry like this until your form is stable, as otherwise you will be changing the topology too frequently to make this practical.

You can use either ZRemesher or manually retopologize new geometry over top of your “scaffolding” to create a new low poly base of adequate quality.

Detail can always be projected from one mesh to another mesh that occupies the same worldspace via detail projection, with one of the various methods. This can be used to project fine surface detail from an earlier version of the mesh at a single subdivision level, to a multi-res mesh with more deliberate topology.