How to maintain shape of original basemesh after subdividing

system · July 3, 2019, 8:46am

Hey, I have an issue with zbrush where the base geo gets smoothed out after being subdivided. Not only that, but it also shrinks the boarders of any mesh which isnt closed. I have been told to save a morph target of the basegeo before subdividing and then switch back after subD…however this technique frequently causes wierd pinching and artifacts on my mesh (usually around the edges) because zbrush doesn’t know how to interpolate the corrected basemesh after switching morph targets. Is there anyway around this?

Thanks!

beta_channel · July 4, 2019, 4:19am

Crease your open edges before subd.

system · July 4, 2019, 4:20am

Thanks for the reply. that did the trick for open meshes, but I am still having the issue of the base geo drastically softening out after applying subdivisions in Zbrush. Could someone explain to me why zbrush behaves this way? the higher subdivisions maintain for form of the geo but the base mesh is much softer, this is really not desirable especially on hard surface assets with support edge loops for example.

dillster · July 4, 2019, 4:20am

You can untick smoothing in the Geometry palette before subdividing. Maybe not disable it for every time you subdivide, play wth it and see what works best for you.

beta_channel · July 4, 2019, 4:20am

Zbrush isn’t just using the vertex normals and tangents to smooth your mesh. It is literally smoothing your mesh when you sub-divide. It will give you the same result as if you were to collapse your stack in max or freeze your mesh in modo or maya.

If you want to have a faked subD then you can use dynamic subDs. This has the exact same draw backs as other systems as well though.

system · July 4, 2019, 4:20am

Im having the same problem with a character and accessories i modeled in max. i brought the character into zbrush, subdivided him, then exported lowest subdivision and now he is not fitting the accessories like it was. SO far ive found multiple other people saying thats just the way it is and you can store morph targets and stuff to correct it but it seems like it would be nice to just be able to go back to the original base mesh. Why do you do this ZBrush?