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Simple retopology question in Zbrush 3.5

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I have a simple question on Retopology.

I was looking at an old Zbrush 3 tutorial from Meat Meiers and he stated that during the process of retopology, you should avoid creating N-gons and that Zbrush will show holes where there are N-gons whenever I press ‘A’ (to preview the adaptive skin). Only quads and triangles will show according to him.

I noticed though in Zbrush 3.5, I created some 5 sided N-gons and Zbrush seemed to rendered them when I pressed ‘A’.

Was this something that’s changed in Zbrush 3.5 or should I still avoid making N-gons?

Just curious…

#2

They probably improved the skining so you don’t get holes in your mesh any more, but you should still avoid ngons like the plague. The problem with ngons is that they’re going to get converted to quads and tris anyway when you generate your adaptive skin or in some cases when you subdivide, only you’re not deciding where the edges go, the skinning algorithm is making that decision for you. Do you really want an algorithm making your artistic decisions for you? I hope not :slight_smile:

Tris will cause polarity in your subdivisions, so if you have to use a tri, do so intentionally, and either use them to get a specific look - like dimples in skin or a foramen in bone - or put them in inconspicuous areas that no one will see.

#3

In the topology menu, set your “Max Strip Length” to the minimum, 4 (quads). This will preview only valid quads and tris.

If set higher, Zbrush tries to make guesses about how you'd like to fill in Ngons, and adds geometry during skin generation. The preview will reflect this.

I find it useful to only work at this setting at the minimum, as any errors in the topology I have made will be apparent. Otherwise, missed targets and ngons may be obscured as Zbrush tries to fill them in in a sub optimal manner.

#4

Thanks for the answers. It was very helpful.