Hello @lowhues
You cannot insert a single, clean unbroken edgeloop in that area because the underlying topology does not support it. It’s looking for a ring of clean quads with unbroken edgeloops on either side. Triangles or poles will complicate the poly flow. Spiral topology will also produce spiral edgeloops when inserted.
You can remesh, but the form of your mesh is complicated. Auto-retopo solutions like ZRemesher may not be able to see what you can see in the mesh. You can improve your results by using ZRemesher guides (sparingly) to suggest an edgeflow to Zremesher. Even better results can be achieved with cleanly defined polygroups and the “Keep Groups” option. ZRemesher will then tend to create loops that flow along the borders of the polygroups, and draw clean edges along those borders.
No auto-retopo solution can produce topology of the quality that a human can. They are designed to create adequate topology for situations where that will be sufficient. There will always be situations where you need to manually retopologize the mesh. Trial and error spirals can be avoided by eliminating the expectation of creating perfect topology with a single button press in many situations. Simply let the process do the heavy lifting for areas where that is adequate, then manually touch up errors or re-wire areas by hand when they require it. This still represent a big savings in time over having to manually retopologize the entire mesh.
Good luck!
