ZBrushCentral

Wonky & Unruly Polys

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi,
I created a jaw for a creature by pulling polys from the throat area of my base mesh. In attempt to smooth the transition I used the typical smoothing function (holding shift) and scrubbed the area with my pen. It appeared to retract/relax the area as expected, but after some time modelling elsewhere on the sculpt (which included some more sculpting, dynameshing, etc…) a revisit to this area unearthed a disturbing discovery when polyframe was enabled.

Here’s the mess. There’s a ton of twisted taffy nastiness hidden from view but this pic pretty well illustrates the problem.

The jaw is the part on the right that’s partially masked. I’d like to know how to get the rear of the jaw to connect to the original area it was pulled from (see below).

This hole is where the polys were pulled from and where the jaw should simply connect to without all the taffy.

Maya is my safety net, so I could go there to clean it up but for the sake of learning, would rather fix this in ZB (if it’s possible). I’ve tried masking out the area and running some deformation functions like relax but it doesn’t want to return to its original shape. Probably because ZB doesn’t remember what that was and the deformations are simply calculating on the current state of the polys’ normals. Ultimately it’s just getting worse.

Ideas?

Attachments

Capture2_originalHole.jpg

Capture1_stretchedPoly.jpg

#2

I hope I understood it right
I think you just need to make the whole mesh into one polygroup (ctrl+w) and then dynamesh it
if this doesn’t work then hide the green polygroup then delete hidden and try to dynamesh it then
hope it fixes it

#3

Thanks Fynn. I ended up doing something along those lines and it worked (sort of):

Specifically there were about a dozen polygroups huddled together in the taffy, so I grouped them as one polygroup and split the model. This resulted in the taffy being made into their own subtool, with the jaw and head also on their own layers. I simply deleted the taffy and updated the dynamesh on the surviving pieces to plug the holes.

No doubt this method was probably a hacky work around, but I’m able to sculpt again and will figure out how to remerge these two pieces later. More than likely it’ll require just tilting the jaw before the merge as to avoid the teeth from merging.

Thanks for the reply.

#4

I can’t be sure what I’m looking at in the first pic, but it looks like you have overlapping meshes occupying the same space. The Polygroups > Autogroup function may be useful to make sure the objects are completely separate polygroups, and then you can hide/unhide them using the Shift+Ctrl click visibility controls and delete any extraneous meshes, or use the Subtool > Split > Groups split to split them all into separate subtools to see if you have any.

As far as how to connect the two pieces in the second pic, you could use the Curve Bridge brush to draw polys between the two broken areas, then remesh to clean it up.

If you don’t need to connect two separate pieces, but just need to close a hole in a single piece, use Tool > Geometry> Modify Toplogy > Close Hole.

#5

I’ve never heard of this curve bridge brush, but it sounds exactly like what I’ve been looking for.

Thanks!

#6

Using the curve bridge brush was a partial success in that it was something new to learn and to a small degree worked. IT did bridge the hole as the tool was designed to do. However, strange seams were generated where the two holes connected to the newly formed bridge (most likely from the two meshes mismatched poly counts along the edges.

Ultimately tilting the lower jaw to expose the inside of the mouth and keep the teeth from intersecting, then dynameshing it worked. So easily in fact I’m embarrassed about missing it earlier.

In any case, thanks to everyone for the helpful replies. People like y’all make this a great community.

#7

Yes, tris are an unavoidable side effect of creating a new mesh section that wasn’t there previously, or partially subdividing a portion of the mesh. As you surmised, in a dynamesh workflow you don’t sweat this much, because you’ll be re-meshing frequently. The whole point of dyamesh is to not worry overmuch about toplogy at all until as you establish form. A quick and dirty way to join two meshes is to just sort of mash one into the other so they’re making contact, and let Dynamesh sort it out during the remesh, where it will close minor gaps and holes.