Hi, Ive noticed that subdivsion (SD) levels, and switching on/off layers can bake (probably) unwanted effects onto your mesh.
Here is a quick test:
- Have a head subtool with 3 SDs
- On a new layer, scale the mesh down
- Exit layer recording and turn off layer
Now switching on/off the layer, everything works as expected.
But instead:
- Switch on the layer
- Go to SD1
- Switch off the layer
- Go to SD3
Now the mesh has been smoothed
Repeat several times, and your head is a different person
One solution would be to reimport the original head (with all layers off). But I would expect a layer to behave like a layer, ie something to completely switch on/off.
I believe it is the SD levels that are responsible for the smoothing.
This smoothing effect, is also present when you import a lower SD mesh into a higher one.
For corrective shape sculpting, I had a SD4 body mesh, which i imported SD2 leg poses into as layers. After several poses, the leg part of the mesh had become smoothed. (even with all layers switched off)
In addition, the posed mesh became smoother when I import the SD2 pose, switch to SD4, then back to SD2. This caused unexpected issues, as the corrective blendshape, later made in Maya, created a roughening effect.
Again, a solution was to repeat the process of: import SD2 pose, return to SD4.
Dong this somewhat restored the SD2 pose mesh’s detail , but it also increased the baked smoothing effect (mentioned above).
The final solution (that worked) was to just use a SD2 mesh for corrective sculpting instead. This did eliminate the smoothing effect.
But by then, I had many sculpt layers made on SD4 mesh. Deleting higher SD levels to get a SD2 mesh locked those layers, disallowing me from editing them. To keep those layers, I could export each seperatedly as objs, and import them into a new working SD2 mesh. I chose not to as there were too many.
Does anyone else face issues with SD levels? I would love to hear your solutions/ tips/ workarounds.