3D Printing - Dynamesh Total Points Issue

[system]

Hello everyone at ZBrush Central!

I’m looking for some help.
I have created a model that needs to be 3D printed, this is a model of a character with two detailed pistols pointed out at arms length and a high detail head. The problem I’m having is when I Dynamesh the figure in order to merge the subtools and create a watertight “shell” for printing my total points fall from 6 million down to 1.5 million. This results in perfect body detail but complete loss of detail on the guns and head.

I have tried every variation of Dynamesh options I can see in the Tool menu, and tried changing the scale of the model. The only times I can change the total point count is if I scale the model down, however this results in even less points and quality.

I have created higher detail figures without problems in the past and used the same workflow for 3D printing. Some loss of quality is to be expected after Dynameshing, although the loss of quality here is too much.

I’m sure I’m missing something very simple, and maybe it is right in front of my eyes but does any one know how I can Dynamesh my model with a higher total point output?

Thank you, looking forward to receiving any help available

[Spyndel]

Generally you’d increase the resolution slider in Dynamesh to make a denser mesh, but Dynamesh has an upper limit in how much fine detail it can capture, and works best at medium to medium high mesh resolution. At some point, no matter how high you set the dynamesh resolution slider, you wont be able to hold the finest detail, or your system will just freeze up from trying. So at some point you’re going to want to switch to a traditional multiple subdivision level workflow, with high levels of subdivision to hold fine detail.

What you’re probably going to want to do is project the fine detail from your original mesh onto a newly merged mesh that has been subdivided sufficiently to hold the detail. Read the following page for details on transferring detail with mesh projection:

http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/topology/zremesher/transferring-detail/

[Gordon_Robb]

Or increase the scale of your model. That’ll result in more polys in dynamesh. The scale in Zbrush, doesn’t really affect that actual size of the model, just set that in yor stl export.

However, projecting the detail is a good way to go too.

[Spyndel]

Increasing the size of your mesh will allow it to capture more detail, but at the cost of an increased performance burden (it will have to dynamesh more polys). Like I said above at some point it will simply become too performance intensive, and your system will struggle to dynamesh with sufficient resolution to capture fine detail. Increasing the size may help in some situations, but it is still better to get a feel for the limitations of dynamesh, and switch over to to a traditional multi-subdivision level workflow at some point to avoid running into the practical limits. For instance, it would be better to use dynamesh to to establish form and get all your tool merging done, before starting fine detail work.