ZBrushCentral

R3 Retopo' problems...

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I’m having problems getting retopo’ to work at all in R3.

E.G.

Select ‘plane’, make polymesh, draw it and go into edit mode,

select ZSphere. Draw, and scale down real small.

Open ‘Rigging’ and select plane mesh as the base mesh to draw on.

So far so good.

Open Topology, and select ‘Edit Topology’.

At this point I should be able to draw topo’ on the plane, right?

Can’t seem to do an thing. Click, Shift-click, Ctrl-click, Ctrl-Shift-A all tried.

Also the ‘Rigging’ menu appears to ‘lose’ the base mesh.
‘Select mesh’ turns back on.

Am I missing something? (again?) Something changed in R3?

G.

#2

Just did the exact same thing except for scaling the ZSphere (not really necessary) and it works like a charm. Actually Retopo works a lot smoother in R3. Have you tried Retopo on an actual model?

#3

lol i hope when you selected the mesh in the rigging tab you actually selected the PM3D and not the primitive :slight_smile:

#4

Thanks dsoellbuster.

But yes. I selected the PM3D.

I started with another mesh that was flat, but not a plane. I was trying
to draw a 2D alignment grid to help me get facial prop’s right.

At first I used the polypaint to polygroups trick to get a rough grid, but
being an engineer :D, I figured I’d clean it up and retopo’ to get minimal
poly count and straight lines.

But I got about 4 polys into the retopo’ and found just could not draw
any further. I thought perhaps the problem was I was trying to draw
on elements that were too thin (X-Y).

So I backed off to using a flat plane as described andfound I could not
even get started.

Later I tried it in 3.1, same problem. So it must be me.

Clearly I’m just losing my mind. I know it works, I’ve used the method before, but right now I just cannot seem to draw topo on a flat plane.

(In the end I went and got my grid drawn in Blender. Probably a better
method anyway as you can site vertices precisely.)

I’ll update when (if?) I figure out what I’m doing wrong.

G.

#5

I’ve tried this now several times. And I’ve also tried 3.1

In both 3.1 and 3.5R3, I have problems getting the first vertex to appear.
You end up Ctrl-clicking and clicking all over the place until you get one
point to appear, then move that to the right point and build on it.

However once you’ve got started, in 3.1 you can then expand the topology
over the plane to create the shape you need. No further problems.

Under 3.5R3 it seems to be impossible If I’m lucky I get to draw a few polys, but no more
(my record is six). Those vertices I ‘can’ place often
appear at odd ‘Z’ locations. Either behind the plane or above it.

I have no problems with ‘real’ 3D meshes, but a flat plane just doesn’t seem
to work anymore.

G.

[Edit: This is on Vista, 32-bit]