ZModeler Bridge 2 Holes now corrupts my entire mesh?

[Mighty_Thor]

Apparently Pixologic has revamped the way ZModeler> Edge>Bridge>Two holes works so that it now seems to run a low level remeshing operation on the entire model, ruining my carefully created geometry and generally making a lot of decisions that I’d very much prefer it did not.
So many new triangles. So many holes where there were no holes before. So many random points linked by weird polygon bridges. Apparently in the name of making the bridge “smoother” which it is now much worse at doing as well than the original command.
Is anyone aware of a way to turn this “feature” off? Because I use the bridge function a lot in my workflow, and this revamp has rendered it sloppy and completely useless.

Here is what it’s done with face and especially eye geometry after attempting to attach a character head. First image is clean geometry, second has new triangles, holes punched through the eyelids, and the eyeballs and lids merged into a single object via weird broken geometry.

All of the various settings for bridge appear to use this new corrupted method, as does edge extrude. There’s no way to simply “Bridge” something anymore without also destroying a lot of polygons.

Any ideas?

[Spyndel]

Hello @Mighty_Thor,

This is typically caused by one or both of the following:

1. The ZModeler Welding Tolerance in Preferences> Geometry is set too high. Reduce that to a lower or minimum value.

2. The mesh is too small in the ZBrush worldspace. The optimal working size in ZB is a Tool> Geometry> Size XYZ value of approximately 2. Meshes that are especially small may experience inadvertent point welding even if the above slider is reduced to minimum value.

I would also point out that ZModeler is a low poly modeling tool. Sections of your mesh there are denser than ZModeler is intended to work with. There would be less chance of this happening if your points were spaced further apart.

Good luck!

[Mighty_Thor]

Thanks, I appreciate the response.

1-Honestly, my issue is that it’s universally welding at all, as previous versions of the tool did not seem to process the entire model for potential welds, but kept their impact restricted to the area that I was bridging. They made no effort to “clean up” that bridge beyond the parameters I set. Nor does this solution address why it’s turning my quads into triangles for no reason, which it is doing enthusiastically.

2- Good idea, but I’ve tried and the size of the model in the worldspace has no impact on this at all. It corrupts and remeshes the model in the exact same way whether it’s tiny or huge.

There appears to be a fundamental change in how ZModeler code is dealing with these kinds of functions with the advent of “edge extrude”, which does the same unwanted re-meshing and is causing problems in several departments for me. Perhaps the old code for Bridge has been replaced with some version of “Edge extrude”? If so, I’d beg Pixologic to restore the option of the old tool. I want Zmodeler to be local and slightly clunky, I do not ever want it to remesh my entire model against my will.

ZModeler may be meant for low poly, but it’s easily handled hundreds of models of this exact resolution in the past, doing this exact function, without any problems at all. This is a new thing.

Thanks again.

[Mighty_Thor]

Ok, setting the Zmodeler welding to 1 in Preferences does appear to nearly make it stop doing this.

It’s still welding all adjacent objects into one big object, but it’s at least doing less wanton damage.

If the code allows, could I request that Pixologic consider adding a “zero” option to that slider, to prevent it from executing random welds at all outside the local area? I can likely resolve this with a combo of setting it to 1 and making the model bigger, but the option to get rid of it entirely would be really helpful.

My application of the software (high-res sculpture for 3d printing) sometimes requires me to use Zmodeler functions at higher resolutions, and as I said, this was something that’s always worked fine in the past. Re-sizing then going through and un-sticking (or exporting to Blender to use their edge bridge I suppose) is just a slow, clumsy solution in place of what used to be an easy, simple function.

Thanks for your time.

[EVER_BITA]

I’m going through exactly that same problem, did you find a solution?