Applying Twist Deformation To A Selection

[narticus]

I am trying to recreate a detail from a NYC lamp post that has a spiral-like affect:

I have a base mesh modeled out at a relatively low poly from Max (7k), which I imported to Zbrush and subdivided a few times before adding detail. Using a mask, I added the details vertically hoping to twist deform them after, to get clean lines.
Maybe this isn’t the most efficient way of creating this sort of detail, so any advice on it is welcome.

The problem is the stretched polys at the edge of the mask. What can I do to avoid that? I tried splitting them into subtools but that seems to create seams in between them and I’m not sure how to merge subtools without losing my subdivision history.

I’ve been a Zbrush user for 3-4 years now, but mainly for creating rocks or wood. Never used it for hard surface scultping.

Any help is appreciated!

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[marcus_civis]

I think you’re probably making things difficult for yourself. The easiest way would be to sculpt the feature straight off using radial symmetry and sculpting on a diagonal. That way you won’t have any problems with stretched polys. Obviously this isn’t literally a rope twist but I don’t think the detail you show is either!

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[narticus]

Thanks Marcus!

I was actually trying it that way at first, but getting mixed results. I think maybe because the polys aren’t evenly squared in that portion. So further to the bottom it would get very blocky and step-ey (not sure what the word for that is?).
Maybe I should reimport it with more even polys from Max to solve that problem.