Help, merge meshes for uv map

[system]

Greetings everyone, i have a problem here and was wondering if there was a way of getting this done:

Say you have a character composed of various parts (clothing), you merge everything into one subtool so that you can make a single uv map for everything, then you create subdivision levels and start sculpting details (cloth wrinkles and such).
The problem is that i want to add extra parts (meshes) into that merged subtool with subdivision levels and sculpted detail, and i cant find a reliable way to do that, tried insert mesh after freezing subdivisions (problems with reprojection) and merge down with same amount of subdivisons (it merges but kills subdivision levels), can´t think of a way to do this and have run out of ideas… Can you help?

Sorry if this was confusing and thanks in advance!

[Cryrid]

If you merge it and everything has the same number of subdivision levels, they may be wiped out but you should be able to easily restore them using Tool: Geometry: Reconstruct Subdiv

[system]

Thanks for the reply Cryrid, tried it but it was unable to reconstruct subdivision levels…the model (astronaut with suit) has many parts and geometry with triangles and such, don´t know if that is the problem…for this specific project i will not need this but for a future project it would be very nice to find a workaround for this.

It´s anoying to say the least to be allways concerned if you forgot a tiny part that you need to add later, but can´t…

[Cryrid]

Are all your models subdivided prior to the merge? Subdivision cant produce triangles; if the current topology was created through subdivision then it can be reconstructed. Depending on how many subtools have triangles, you may want to retopologize the problem ones first (even a simple dynamesh or qremesh could do the trick). Something basic that you can subdivide back up to match the same levels as the other subtools prior to merging.

If you have a lot of parts/subtools that have triangles in them and they’re just for detail (like nuts and bolts), merge them into their own subtool first, and subdivide those the required amount of times without any smoothing. Depending on what you’re doing, it may be good to consider if such parts even require UVs or if they’re just details that are going to be recreated through the texture maps that you’re creating.

[system]

Yes, they are subdivided to the same amount of subdivisions, example:

I have a suit with a set of parts/meshes (one subtool) with 5 subdivisions, and i forgot one piece of cloth. I make a 2nd subtool and subdivide it 4 times (5 subdivisions). Next it should allow the merge but it destroys the subdivisions in the process.

There was a time when it allowed it and didn’t destroy anything but was after a few tries…

Sorry for late reply, lots of work

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[Cryrid]

I think you’re getting into some pretty foul black magic if you somehow have a triangle after 5 subdivisions. The first subdivision itself would turn any triangle into 3 quads, and the mesh would be all quads from there (further more, zbrush could not have four lower subdivision levels stored if the top-most one had a triangle present, because that would just defy all the math behind subdivision).

The only thing I can think of is that you’re trying to weld them while merging. This could change the topology which would then prevent the mesh from returning to any lower subdivision levels. Otherwise if you take two meshes that have the same number of subdivision levels and do a straight up merge, the levels are preserved in the result.