Help me understand the concept of freezing/deleting subDivisions.

[Fabianoz]

Hi there!

I’m fairly new to zbrush and I have started making an octopus tentacle. The tentacle is around 15mil active points (polygons) and is quite heavy atm. My problem however is that there has come up a lot of scenarios where I need to do something to the mesh, for example use a bend curve deformer on the mesh, but zBrush wont let me because I have multiple sub divisions on my subtool. I know that keeping several subdivisions is a great thing, especially since I need to create a normal map for this bad boy at some point.

The thing is that it prompts me to either delete all subdivisions or freeze it. My mesh has the “freeze subdivision levels” button turned orange which I assume is “ON”. But it still gives me the prompt when I try to add a deformer to it. And I don’t want to delete any more subdivision (I only have 2 of them, one is 3 mil and the other is 15mil). I need to work with a lower divided version of this aswell in order to sucesfully reposition it. At the moment my PC just freezes when I try to add a deformer (and I got a pretty beefy rig). Another thing is that when I press the reconstruct subdiv button or try to uncheck the “freeze subdivision levels” button… my sculpt becomes messed up.

Sorry if this question is a bit loose and all over the place. Sometimes it’s just hard to know what questions to ask when you don’t really understand the entire picture of something.

So i guess the questions are:

• Is there a way for me to use deformers or any other tool to curve my tentacle arm backwards. ( I need to expose the suction cups so it will be easier for baking later etc.

• And how do I maintain all of my subdivision levels through a long project when I need to do actions that requires me to delete the subdivision levels or freeze them.

Thanks in advance!

[Spyndel]

Hello @Fabianoz

Welcome to the Zbrush community. Allow me to pick out some points here.

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My mesh has the “freeze subdivision levels” button turned orange which I assume is “ON”. But it still gives me the prompt when I try to add a deformer to it.

This should not be happening. If you have frozen the subD levels and the mesh currently only has a single level of subdivision, the deformer should apply without issue. If you aren’t mistaken, then there’s something else going on.

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Is there a way for me to use deformers or any other tool to curve my tentacle arm backwards. ( I need to expose the suction cups so it will be easier for baking later etc.

Yes, this would generally be a posing operation. If you just need to change the pose of the figure, but not the base topology, then Transpose Master is a tool designed to allow you to pose a merged version of all the desired subtools at the lowest level of subdivision, and transfer those changes back to all the individual subtools at their highest levels of subdivision.

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And how do I maintain all of my subdivision levels through a long project when I need to do actions that requires me to delete the subdivision levels or freeze them.

Some tools in Zbrush only work at a single level of subdivision. This is because they generally alter the topology. Most of these tools are geared towards the creation of a base mesh, which will then be subdivided for the purposes of high detail sculpting or painting. So it’s really about developing a process, and using the correct tools for the current stage of the process.

While someone is just develping the basic form of the mesh, they may choose to work without subdivision levels in exchange for the freedom to re-mesh it frequently. Once that form has been established, the need for frequent re-meshing will diminish, and they may transition to a traditional multiple subdivision level process for fine detail sculpting, painting, texture creation, or posing.

But at any point in Zbrush if you need to alter the topology again, you can project the detail from one mesh, to another version of that mesh with different topology that occupies the same worldspace. The Freeze SubDivision level button simply automates that process–though sometimes manual re-projection will be called for.