Here’s my latest test with using the retopology tools to make a unified mesh from multiple sub-meshes. I built the “trunk” from a cylinder, used retopology to make a “vine” of ZSpheres along the surface which I used “convert to main” to make a new tool that was just the vine. I added this as a subtool of the tree. I then did a little minor sculpting of the two together. Then I matched sub-div levels of the adaptive skin and the tree mesh and cloned out an adaptive skin of the vine. I deleted the vine sub-tool and inserted the new vine mesh using insert mesh and the result is a single sub-tool tree and vine. The quick masking works on this, which is sweet. Now, I went back to the retopology tools to make a low poly base mesh around the two of them. By carefully making this mesh I can get a very nice new mesh with the detail of both tools. By carefully I mean that the base mesh completely encompasses both of the subtools, and all the face of the new mesh are facing at a good angle to be projected down and capture the details of the base sub-meshes. Anyone who has laid out cages for normal map projections will recognize the work flow. Voila! Perfect new mesh which goes down to the base topology and has sub-divisions (with projection on) which capture all the details of tree and vine. Nice!
-Royal
