Can anybody please tell me why and how the Edge Loop button is useful? I’ve never been able to figure this out, because in most situations that I’ve encountered, I’ve only required that a given edge loop be split into two edge loops. The Edge Loop button, however, splits an edge loop into three edge loops instead. Isn’t this overkill?
It’s handy if you need to add more polygons to an area. For example, if you’ve done an extrusion and want to manipulate the edge which is made up of just one row of polygons. A single edge loop will turn that into multiple rows, which can now be sculpted.
A second use is through the Crisp switch. This tells ZBrush to put the edge loops very, very close to the edge of the visible area. That way when you divide the model in any application you’ll get a crisp edge without the need for special edge smoothing tags.
A third “hidden” use of Edge Loop is to create polygons. Hide part of the model and move one or more points along the edge of the visible model. Press Edge Loop. ZBrush will create new polygons to fill the space between the original point locations and the new point locations. I wrote a tutorial on that a long time ago: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=20370
Didn’t know about this gem. Thanks for the reply, Aurick!