ZBrushCentral

Mushroom Monster disaster any ideas?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I have a massive love hate going with ZBrush. Every once and a while it does something for no apparent reason. Generally it’s dropping a model or at times I loose the low res. This was the first full figure I tried in ZBrush from scratch. Had a few problems with the layout but overall it was working. Well after I did my last save I zoomed out and noticed this rogue polygon. It appears to be a file corruption. It seemed to come from the foot the first time I saw it. ZBrush crashed right after it happened and when I reopenned it the the polygon seemed to come from the side. Sadly I started overwriting the same file on the saves about three hours ago. I have an earlier save but it would be halfway to starting over. Any thoughts on how to fix it? The only thing I can think to do is save off the displacement map, transfer it to Lightwave then fix the problem then transfer it back and reapply the map. I’ve yet to even try importing a model to Lightwave so it’s not my favorite fix. Fortunately all I’d be talking about transfering would be a low res OBJ. Just not sure how well the map will lay back down. Really heartbreaking after all the work. I ripped through it fairly fast but still not looking forward to loosing half a night’s work.

If anyone cares to give it a shot I’d be happy to e-mail them the model. Just hate to see it go to waste.

Attachments

Mushroom-Monster-Comp.jpg

Mushroom-Monster-Comp-Mesh.jpg

#2

Want to see something seriously scary? This happened after I left the file open while I loaded the exported file into Lightwave and fixed it. Still have to figure out saving and reapplying the displacement. There was a polygon from the foot that was fused on to the back. That part was an easy but I still have to sort out reapplying the map. The ZBrush file is very badly corrupted.
Pretty disturbing to have it happen on the very first serious thing I tried.

Attachments

Mushroom-Monster-Scary-Corr.jpg

#3

What u said happen to me once, ddnt know why really, but million polis get into a massive triquad ball that crashed zbrush, i still have the model converted to a massive triquad model, its nice to make sometimes abstract things. Anyway i never know why really that happen, so yoes im interested too if someone more knows why zbrush goes crazy sometimes.

luis faus

#4

I got this too. Deleting the highest res and re-dividing helped me… but if there´s too much detail which get lost it´s too bad. maybe someone has a better solution.

greetz jens

#5

the thing is that when u export a model from zbrush to another program and u work there, and after u reimport the object into zbrush, sometimes it does that crazy thing ( i think this is cos the other software, lw in this case, it changes the internal order of the vertex when u export it back into zbrush…

#6

This happens to me once when I was saving the tool at its highest level>>
a point in the polygon just run wild to an eternal space.

I end up mannually move the point back in place and managed to
continue working at my tool by save the tool at its lower editing level
and result in a lighter size in file.

P.S. That’s a neat model, well done!

#7

I have this problem when I work in zspheres preview mode.
But if I make an adaptive mesh, I can do what I want, I don’t have this problem any more.:lol:

#8

Didnt this had to do something with the order of polygon’s i believe in maya you can hace the same but there was a setting which did not re-order the polygons…

#9

Let me guess: you were using Projection Master to displace geometry?

A thing to remember about Projection Master is that it will affect every point that is angled toward the camera – even ones that are behind what’s visible on the canvas. For example, if you dropped a model of a biplane viewed from the top, both the upper and the lower wings would be painted on.

This gets particularly tricky where model edges are concerned – such as the mouth or eye holes in a head. Projection Master looks at the normal of each point to determine whether displacements (or paint) should be applied to it. Sometimes (particularly with models created outside of ZBrush), the edges of objects can have randomly-aligned points. If your model is dropped at just the right angle, Projection Master will catch one of those points and pull it to the area you were actually painting on at that moment.

How do you prevent this? It’s actually really easy. Simply hide the parts of the model that you’re not currently working on at the moment. For example, if you’re working on the back or side of a head, hide the face so that those edge points can’t be affected. Not only will this prevent stray points, but it will also speed up your interaction with that high-poly mesh.

How do you fix it if it happens? 3DP has given a detailed explanation here.

As for what happened when you exported the model to Maya, the point order got changed around by Maya on import. As a result, when the points got reapplied in ZBrush, the model got scrambled the moment you changed subdivision levels. Rather literally. Each level relates to all the other levels. Changes made at one level affect all other levels. When the point order changes, that dependency becomes messed up and so does your model. To eliminate that from happening, there is a Maya import setting that you need to turn off. If I remember right it’s called “Create Multiple Objects”, but to be sure I recommend that you look at the tutorial by Paul Hourmouzis found in ZBC’s FAQ>Other Applications>Maya section.

#10

Sadly the corruption is in the lowest res. A control point from the foot welded itself onto the back. Pretty much given up and I’m going to just start over. I think I’ll go to another model first. Too painful to redo that one at the moment.

#11

Actually I hadn’t used Projection Master on this model. It’s a definate corruption. Literally a control point from the foot is welded to the back. I loaded the low res into Lightwave to check and they are definately connected. The only fix would be deleting and rebuilding the polygons in Lightwave but I’m not sure if the maps would survive this. Intensely frustriating because I was buried on a budget all week and this is the first chance I had to play since the first two day learning session. Having a problem like this right out of the gate is scary and disturbing. I’m having to restructure how I do saves. I suggested to them to add an atuosave option to the scripting part. I think if I had been able to save the script before it had crashed I could have used it to redraw the model, hopefully without the corruption. Unfortunately it crashed before I had a chance to save the script. Guess I’m starting over.

#12

It happened withing ZBrush, I never exported the model. I thought I could export the model to fix the damage but I’m not sure if there’s anyway to keep the maps and morph intact. Pretty make taking it as a painful lesson at this point. I was using it as a learning tool but I was hoping for a useable model as well. I just have to come up with a different saving convention. Staggering software but not the most stable. Starting to have Animation MAster flashback. Those can get nasty.

#13

I thought it was a rogue control point at first myself, could have sadly fixed that one. Would you believe the point is welded to the back? Ugly situation. Just a hard lesson at this point. The joke is I don’t think there’s normally anyway to weld points in ZBrush let alone ones that far apart. I’ve gotten rogue polys in other softwares before but in ZBrush I don’t think there’s any way to fix the damage.

#14

Thought I’d better post some low res shots to make it a little clearer. A point in the toe is welded to the back polygon. Very weird because only that toe polygon is deformed. The rest of the foot is fine. I thought at first it was an extra polygon but in Lightwave when I deleted it there was no polygon on the toe. It’s definately the toe poly. Haven’t a clue how to correct something like this. Definately a glitch. My kind of luck to be the only one with this problem.

Attachments

Mushroom-Mess-Comp.jpg

#15

Do You mind upload that file for us to see what actually happens down
there??? Just goto the lowest level and do a delete higher level,
then save a copy of thatas a tool(don’t overwrite) and upload!

or export the lowest level as a *.obj file, then open it in any editor to see if
the point is really weld??? sometimes it is just a case of 2 points occupied
the same space(they’re not welded), you can still move the point…
if that’s the case, Won’t “smart resymetry” be able to fix the problem???

or try to hide all the rest of polygroups but the foot and try moving that
single point away and then unhide the rest… Just to make sure if the 2 points
really are welded?

#16

I don’t know if this applies in your case or not, but I had a very similar problem today with my first WIP. I had been trying to fix everything by moving things around a little at a time and things just got worse. What I did was reduce to the lowest resolution after opening my most recent saved tool. Then I masked the bad half of my model. Then I ran smart resymetry on level one. Then I did the same, one level at a time until I reach the highest level. IT WORKED!!!:smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

#17

Good to know that worked and it might help with another corrupted model but I did try smart symetry. Just made it worse. Seems it can’t handle two control points welded together. Pretty much given up on this one. Learned my lesson and I save constantly now and don’t overwrite the same file.

#18

If that’s the case, I think your OS or Hardware is running into some kind of problems, possibly RAM is the trouble maker!

#19

I plan to switch to ECC ram on the next system I build. Might help with these issues. Could also be errors when it writes to the hard drive since with the larger files it has to every once in a while write to disk. Also plan to double or quadrupple my ram on the next system.

#20

ECC might slows down the performance quite a bit, it’s not a
very wise choice! if such a case happens more than once,
I then assumed that you are saving your tools at their
highest S.div level.

Just to make sure you are saving your tool at its lower S.div level,
this reduce the file in size a lot and save you a lot of time saving
and loading your tools…

sometimes saving the tool at its highest S.div level might result
in file curruption you faced just then.>>swap paging is always
the one that screws things up!