I generated a mesh in rhino that I want to detail in zbrush.
The weird thing is it has all of these lines that outline the features on the mesh.
I tried renaming the .mtl file so the .obj file couldn’t load it when importing into zbrush, and they still appeared. There are no groups in the mesh, so I don’t think it’s related to that.
Is Polyframe turned on?
Do you mean am I in quick mode with wireframes visible?
If so, then no. The renders posted were with quick mode off and no smoothing.
i am wondering if zbrush is interpreting info from the rhino file as creased edges. I had a heavily creased object from silo once that was kinda like this but don’t think they showed up in a best render.
i wonder if saving a copy with a different name and then going to tool>geometry and hitting uncrease would get rid of them? Something to test maybe?
Well, I’m at work at them moment so I can’t check right now, but I’ll give it a shot.
Does the waefront/objv format even allow for hard edges?
Have I violated some of the laws of phyzicz?
Maybe adding a backlight and making polys double-sided?
I don’t think the normals are reversed. Because if they were they wouldn’t show up in the first image right?
I have fooled around with lighting a bit, but with no results. I’ll try a backlight though when I get home.
edit
I also will kindly volunteer to to beta test this in zbrush 2.5 to see if it has the same things going on. :lol:
I’m home: confirmation/tests
Polyframe is off.
The normals are all correct.
Turning on smoothing makes the triangulated rhino mesh from the gullet of heck go completely whacky.
Hitting uncrease edges doesn’t work.
Backlighting makes no difference.
One thing that’s a little weird is that the noise on the material does show up if you view it from an angle other than dead on. i.e. rotate the object a bit and you can see it. Also setting the noise radius on the material to > 0 fixes the flat surfaces too.
So here’s the issue to the best that I can narrow it down to. When the material is set to fast shader and softz is on the lines will not render. When the material is set to bumpy metal (and others for that matter) the lines will render. I have read the descriptions for the settings and it is not obvious to me which setting or settings could cause this.
Oh, and my offer to test zb 2.5 in this area still stands. 
Could you provide the model for us to check out and see if we get the same results?
Hey bill…
how did ya import it? did ya just use the import button? If so try loading the polymesh tool (the star one) then go down to tools>import and try these settings
merge…could probably stay off but try it on
weld … to .01
tri2quad …somewhere between 35-45
and import it that way and see if they still show up.
@aurick Sure. Is that [email protected] ? I will send it this evening.
@aminuts I will give those a shot.
Aurick. I have sent you a link to the file for download.
Aminuts, the settings had no effect.
Also…
Thanks to everbody for the help so far.
Dang!
Was hoping it would be something simple!
Hope they can fix ya up!
What’s happening is simply that the very sharp edges in the model are rendering as being very sharp. You can’t really smooth the mesh, either, because of the triangles.
Regarding the fact that parts of the mesh aren’t showing the noise when viewed squarely is that for some reason they are falling behind the clipping plane. If you activate the Move gyro and move the object closer to the camera, the details render. I have no real idea why this is happening, although I’m guessing you constructed it initially as n-gons and then converted it to tris and quads before exporting from whatever program you used to create it? If so, there may be something odd about the way that your other app wrote those converted polys.
How can they fall behind the clipping plane when the recessed areas beneath them dont?