reaching polygon limit, seeking advice on where to go from here

[CdeV]

Hi Guys,

I am sculpting a female form which is at about 1.2 million polygons.

I still need to add some details to the face and breasts but when I subdivide from here I jump to 5 million polys and my machine gets too slow to sculpt.

Where do I go from here?:
Make the face and torso into a separate subtool? I’m concerned I’ll have an issue with the parts not matching up…
Dynamesh? Don’t really want to do that because the current geometry lines work really well.
Sculpt HD? No point because this is for 3D printing not rendering.

Apart from getting a new machine, I’m wondering if you could offer some advice as to where I could go from here to add the finishing details. Any ideas/advice would be much appreciated.

Attachments

[dillster]

Mask the areas you want more detail in, then invert the mask and subdivide. This will only add subdiv to the unmasked areas.
Note that it will also break the UVs (if you already have them), so to save them you need to clone the subtool and sculpt the extra details on the clone, then when done delete the UVs. Then append the original unmolested subtool and Project All to get the good UVs over to the clone.

[Djordr]

If your computer starts lagging at 5 million you could mask and hide the parts of the model that you’re not currently working on. That’ll speed up your computer but of course as soon as you unhide the faces again it’ll start lagging. I’m myself on a laptop and at around 10 million faces I also can’t really work without hiding most of the figure.

[system]

You could consider dynameshing your model to redistribute your polygons. Currently you have most of you definition in the arms when you really want it in her face.

[Thor]

You could consider dynameshing your model to redistribute your polygons. Currently you have most of you definition in the arms when you really want it in her face.

I agree that the arms/hands might be a little too hipoly - but I’d look at zremeshing the arms/hands (or the entire model), not dynamesh.
You can use “Keep groups” (not freeze).

[CdeV]

thanks so much for your suggestions dillster ,Djordr ,oxygencube,Thor , I really appreciate it, I was feeling stumped but now I feel I have some ways to move forward, thanks again, I’m going to try these methods out.

[CdeV]

hi again guys, ok so i duplicated and then zremeshed the whole model which redistributed the polygons enough for me create the face, but now Ive just noticed that the hands are very lacking in detail. What I’d like to do is combine the details I achieved on the face and breasts in the new model with the detail I achieved on the hands in the original model…may I ask what you guys would suggest?

is there a way to merge the two?

is there a way to projects the details of the hands onto this new model?

should I cut the hands off and somehow paste them onto the new model…i am concerned about the parts not matching up

any ideas??