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Dynamesh workflow, how do you keep from blurring detail when adding new mesh?Answered

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I have a bad habbit of adding detail as I go on a sclupt. well with the onset of Dynamesh I am feeling the pains of my habit. I detail an area the way I like it but then later down the line I Want to add a dynamesh to further the model. the end result is smearing my detail while smoothing my dynamesh into the base mesh. So, HOw do you add in a dynamesh nice and smoothed in without hurting your existing detail? DO I need to mask something off and lock the details in place some how? Or is there a way tweak how Dynamesh works?

Thanks for any tips!

#2

Hi GridLost,

I’m kind of new to ‘DynaMesh’ myself… Are you on the default’ ‘64’ on the resolution slider? (see attached)

Try ‘upping it’ to ‘128’, and then hit CTRL (Win) and drag down in view (empty space)… Next addition to mesh should update more favorably :wink:

#3

Turn the RePRojected Dynamesh button on. It’s to the right of the Dynamesh button. This method will take longer to remesh, but the details should remain relatively unblurred provided the resolution slider is set high enough (but not unnecessarily high). This trick is also useful if you’ve converted to a polymesh and decide later you want to make it a dynamesh again. It also helps when you want to lower the poly count without losing too much of the detail already sculpted.

#4

It pretty much works like subdivisions, except with DynaMesh resolution. Default is something like 64. Stuff will get very smoothed out that way. Higher resolution will average and smooth out less. So you get the model to where you want it at a particular resolution and then add more, get that to where you want it and add more, etc… You can’t really go down in resolution like you can with Subdivisions (well, you can but it doesn’t work the same way and I believe resolution is a one shot deal, when you go down, it goes down and you start over.)

Now I’m not really going to pretend like I know what I’m talking about, I don’t know ZBrush very well, but DynaMesh has been the easiest thing in the program for me to figure out. So I don’t know if there’s an issue with working on high res DynaMesh models the same way there is with working on stuff with High Subdivision levels where you pretty much have to go down in order to make drastic changes.

But yeah, get the model to where you want it as far as it will let you and add more resolution, get the next level of resolution to where you want it and just keep going like that.

And if you’re working on a model that’s all hard surfaces, you can hit the Polish toggle to the right of the DynaMesh button and it will Auto Clay Polish to try and keep hard edges as hard as possible.

Edit: Yeah, forgot about the Project also. That also make a huge difference in keeping it from shrinking too much.

#5

Heres another tip: For crisper transfer of hard details like edges, scale the object larger in Zbrush’s worldspace before re-meshing. It increases the accuracy and resolution Dynamesh applies to the object relative to very small objects. Then scale it back down to the size you want.

However, you must remember there is an upper limit to the amount of detail Dynamesh will handle. It’s for low to medium resolution meshes, it’s for form, not pores and wrinkles. If you are sculpting at higher resolution, and decide you want to dynamesh to significantly alter the form, freeze that detail on the higher levels, and reproject it after you have dynameshed and subdivided again.

#6

I’m currently seeing how far I can take it because I keep seeing this posted. I was actually just sculpting/remeshing a dynamesh that had over 3 million polygons with no trouble at all, except for BPR which got kind of slow, but that is most likely because I have a whole bunch of options turned on and cranked up (shadows, filters, etc). The ability to reproject when remeshing definitely helps a lot. I’m able to go back and forth between polymesh and dynamesh, as well as go up and down in resolution freely, all without losing any detail at all (edit: well, I lose a little, but it’s not much and hardly noticeable at render time unless you zoom way in). Pretty darn powerful if you ask me. :cool:

System specs: ASUS P7P55D-E Pro, Intel Core i7 875K @ 3.8GHz, 8 GB Corsair XMS3, Nvidia GTX 460, OCZ Vertex 2 SSD, Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch, and Windows 7 64-bit. Will probably upgrade memory to 16 GB when ZBrush 5 comes out. :wink:

#7

It’s phenomenally powerful, I agree. And you can do quite a bit with it, push it quite far. But there is a limit that people will eventually run into. It all has to do with the size and complexity of the object you’re working with. Working with a simple primitive shapes is probably not where you’ll easily hit those limits.

For instance, load the demo soldier tool. Select the body subtool, subdivide that to level 6 where youre at 2+ million polys…high resolution sculpting range. Quickly sculpt a bunch of overlapping fine lines and wrinkles all around his face. Really wrinkle and scar him up.

Now just delete the lower subdivision levels so you don’t have to worry about the freezing process for now and so that DM wont downgrade your mesh to the lowest subD level. Max out the DM resolution slider, turn on projection. Watch the face. Hit the dynamesh button. When Zb finishes (might take a few moments), you’ll see an inevitable degradation of detail in the face.

Dynamesh itself wont produce a mesh dense enough to hold all that detail, as well as staying accurate to the form of the body. But the traditional Zbrush projection tools will transfer that detail just fine onto a high resolution mesh, which is what happens when you “freeze higher subdivision level”. DM just offers to automate that process for you.

As long as you stay within the mesh resolutions that Dynamesh produces, you should be more or less ok with detail (but theres a limit to how much detail you can add in at those levels anyway.) You will still face detail loss over time just from multiple remeshing ( the effects of making a copy of a copy of a copy), and people seeking to make hard edged shapes may sometimes find turning projection on to produce unwanted effects. Furthermore, working at max resolution with projection on in Dynamesh is slow and fairly pointless, which defeats the purpose of the tool. So most detail work is still better left for high resolution sculpting outside of the Dynamesh process.

#8

Thank you everyone! This was most helpful! I’m loving the new tools. Insert tools are awesome! Dynamesh is great! I can’t wait to see some tutorials on all these cool tools!

#9

Oh, I agree that the original intent was for creating a very general sculpt prior to detailing. I’m just saying it works quite well at high resolution too, even with details in despite of what has been said.

I actually did something very similar to what you recommended, and ended up with a polymesh just shy of four million polygons. Converting this to dynamesh with reproject on took about one minute to complete, and the many various tiny details I had added stood up very well to the remesh. The blurring, while evident, was very slight and could only be seen when zoomed way in. After that I turned off reproject and sculpted many more fine details using all the various tools (alphas are always fun), remeshing each time I added some. I remeshed about twenty to thirty times and amazingly no extra blurring happened after that first initial conversion from high res polymesh to dynamesh. Even hard edges were retained. It also was very quick to remesh each time despite the poly count and level of detail. Color me impressed. :cool:

#10

Projection button frequently results in edge artifacts on my hard surface pieces. But perhaps we’re defining hard edges differently.

Dynamesh isnt magic (ok, its kind of like magic, but not in this regard). It cant take the surface detail of 5 million poly mesh, and magically make it display at the same level of polish on a 600k mesh. DM generates medium resolution meshes at best, and a 600k mesh displays whatever detail a 600k k mesh can display. It would display the same detail that traditional projection would transfer to it, and if your DM remshing is taking a minute, you may as well be doing that.

Like I said, dynamesh isn’t for pores and wrinkles, it’s for when you decide someone needs an extra arm, or needs to have a hundred pounds heavier. Or eyestalks. Possibly a prehensile tail. Or the screaming faces of a hundred tormented victims on his torso. Or an eggbeater arm. Or to be an elephant instead of a rhino. Once you’ve moved on to surface detail, youre just zbrushing as normal.

#11

I still agree with the majority of what your saying… mostly. :wink:

All I’m saying is that, if you’re already part of the way through the detailing stage, then decide you want to make a major modification like adding an arm or cutting holes, you can convert your high resolution polymesh back to a dynamesh (with reproject on, which is next to the dynamesh button) and the price you pay will be minimal, coming in the form of a slight blurring of the details already sculpted. That is the only blurring that happens. All subsequent remeshes done in dynamesh mode (with reproject turned off) by ctrl+dragging twice outside the model do not result in any further blurring, ever.

My test mesh is half hard surfaces, with lots of bits glued on using the new curve brushes along with radial symmetry (many flat, curved triangular blades which terminate in a point) as well as various hard edged subtractions. The other half is purely organic sculpting with all kinds of various details added using mostly alphas+standard brush+dragrect. Whether organic or inorganic, neither type seem to be affected much during that first transition from polymesh back to dynamesh, and no further blurring happens to either after that.

If you’re not seeing this, then there must be something fundamentally different between your polymesh/dynamesh and mine, our settings, the way that we work, or all of the above. The only way I can see lots of blurring happening, as in the copy of a copy of a copy in your original reply, is if one were to go back and forth between polymesh mode and dynamesh mode repeatedly.

Anyways, the reason I find this to be a great revelation is because it means we’re not completely locked in once we’ve turned our first completed dynamesh into a polymesh. I don’t know what else to say, because that is what I’m seeing from my tests. Is it magic? Nope, just fantastic coding by Pixologic wizards. :lol:

I hope we can continue to converse amicably, and look forward to your next reply. Take care! :slight_smile:

#12

[edit] Nevermind.

#13

If you’re not seeing this, then there must be something fundamentally different between your polymesh/dynamesh and mine, our settings, the way that we work, or all of the above.

Do you mind sharing your settings? 'cause each and every time I re-dynamesh, any remotely finer details get slightly blurred. I’m still only creating major forms with it (no wrinkles, pores, etc).

Oh man I hope there’ll be a dynamesh brush in Z5!..to just affect the areas you need remeshing.

EDIT: The best results I got at later stages was with blur set to 0.

#14

I think ultimately what I need to do is use more discipline when sculpting. save my detail for the final process.

#15

:cry: Never be afraid to speak your mind. I hold no grudges and make no judgments. After all, we’re here to share and learn, are we not?

Yes, blur is set to zero. The polymesh I’m currently playing with is 1.77 million polygons. Converting it back to dynamesh with a resolution of 520 results in a 1.93 million polygons. Polish is off, and sometimes reproject is on or off, whichever gives better results. Group is irrelevant. Each time I make an edit, like a custom boolean operation for example, and remesh, I continually hit ctrl+z and ctl+shift+z to jump back and forth in order to compare the differences, all while zoomed way in so my nose is virtually up against my mesh (so to speak). Zoomed out to a normal viewpoint makes it too hard to see any difference at all most of the time. Perhaps I’m just more tolerant of minor changes? And they really are minor, nothing that couldn’t be fixed with about 5 minutes of work. Normally I wouldn’t do this, because blocking out rough ideas is what dynamesh was made for, and exactly how I had been using it. I only did this because I was detailing a polymesh generated from a dynamesh, and decided half way through to make major changes that could only be done with dynamesh (holes). I figured it didn’t hurt to try, and that is how I discovered how much improved the remesh code is, code which Pixologic has gone on record as saying is completely new. This is what led me to do more tests on other meshes in an attempt to push it to the breaking point; curiosity.

Dynamesh brush? Hmm, that sounds like an interesting concept. Reminds me a bit of what Sculptris can do. I have no doubt Z5 will be amazing. Every time you think you’ve been as blown away as humanly possible, Pixologic raises that bar and redefines the word “amazing” lol. I expect that we’ll not only see even more revolutionary tools, but some of the ones just added will become even better. :cool:

That sounds like the best plan of attack. Just be sure your happy with your final dynamesh and save it before moving to the polymesh detailing stage. If worse comes to worse and you want to make a major change later on without redoing a bunch of work, it doesn’t hurt to try turning it back into a dynamesh, experimenting with different settings. If it doesn’t work out, you can always stick with the detailed polymesh you have, or load the dynamesh you saved and restart from that point. Part of what ZBrush is all about is giving the artist multiple avenues of attack whenever a problem needs to be solved. Some changes don’t even require dynamesh, so long as you have lower subdivisions on your polymesh. There is always the subtool palette as well.

#16

Ya, some times I take the bazooka to kill a fly method. Usually due to ignorance. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Rock chewing noob. :wink:

#17

@Zeddicus: Thanks for the info! Seems we’re doing things similarly. I’m loving how fast I’m knocking out ideas at the moment. In a word: Freedom! (why did I just say that with a Mel Gibson Braveheart voice out loud? lol)

#18

Oh wow, talk about coincidence. I was listening to a randomized playlist while surfing, and a song from Braveheart started playing just as I started reading your post. :smiley:

Yeah, between dynamesh and booleans, I’m pretty darn happy. Normally I would avoid doing hard surface stuff, opting to us 3ds Max instead for such things, but I’m really loving how easy it is to make incredibly complex mechanical shapes. Can’t wait to see what Z5 will have in store for us, as Z4R2 is going to be hard to top. :cool:

Edit: After watching videos of others working with dynamesh, I’ve noticed that many people seem to be oblivious of the resolution slider, often leaving it at its default setting of 128. Perhaps this might answer why some folks are seeing an unacceptable level of blurring. I’ve seen people do a bunch of nice sculpting, only to destroy the majority of it the instant they remesh.

When I was converting my polymeshes to dynameshes (which also included some older unfinished work that predates dynamesh), I would always tweak the settings until I got what I was after. This entailed setting blur, polish, reproject, and especially the resolution slider. I’d compare the polycount of the original polymesh to the new dynamesh, and undo/redo until I got a dynamesh that retained the majority of my details, while simultaneously keeping the polycount as low as I could get away with. After that, I’d leave the slider alone while I worked on this new dynamesh version of my original sculpt.

I’ve just read a post by Spyndel that dynamesh won’t remesh when no changes have been made. I agree with this. In fact, its made me wonder if remeshing is limited primarily to only the altered portions of the dynamesh, leaving unedited portions alone. It would certainly help explain what I’ve been seeing. I’ve also noticed that you have to be careful with the resolution slider if you decide to change it midway through. Turning it up doesn’t automatically mean the polycount will increase. In fact, playing around some more just now, my mesh went from 922,000 to 254,000 despite the fact that I increased the value of the resolution slider prior to remeshing. The rule of thumb definitely seems to be to find the sweet spot where you’re happy with the polycount and detail retention, then leave it alone until your done sculpting and ready to do the super fine details.