ZBrushCentral

Surface Smoothness

Hi. I am trying to smooth the surface to make it very clean. The problem is that if you look at it from an angle through a MatCap -material, the surface always looks a bit off.

Here is a sample image:

SrfsSmoothness

I have tried to get help from Blouffe’s videos, how he gets the work done, but yet there has not been any break. I primarily use hPolish and Smooth brushes. I have tried to isolate the are with masking and using Deformation option, which have little effect on the are. I think Smoothing and hPolishing the area indefinitely will eventually just ruin the spot and make it completely flatten. With flatten i mean it loses its curvature.

So what is the solution and what is Smart Polish Smooth -brush?

Hello @Kake2000 ,

This is a limitation of your process. Hand-worked/hand-brushed high resolution surfaces will always look hand-worked under close enough scrutiny with a material capable of showing off deviations on the surface. How much of a problem this is depends on your output goals. This may not be an issue for a 3d print below a certain size, but it may be a problem for a close-up photo-realistic render. For some hard surface objects a “dented” or hand-worked looking surface may be desirable. For others only machine-perfection will do. You will need to adopt the correct process that suits your output needs.

If you want machine-perfection, your options are:

  1. Use a low poly modeling process and subdivide upward. Low poly geometry gives you the ultimate in surface and form control at the expense of speed, allowing you to precisely define edges that can be creased in order to stay sharp when being smoothed by subdividing. Limiting the points on the surface allows that surface to be shaped with minimal deformation in the curvature of the surface. The more points define a surface, the greater the potential for flaws in the curvature.

  2. Use the Clip, Slice, and Knife brushes to flatten surfaces to machine perfection on high resolution meshes.

  3. Start with hand-worked geometry, then convert to low res geometry for the purpose of refining. This is a broad and complicated subject that I’m not even pretending to cover in a single form post. However, in order to do this you will need to either manually retopologize your mesh, or attempt to instruct ZRemesher exactly where you need edges drawn so you can crease them accurately. The best tool ZRemesher has for this is the “Keep Groups” feature which will draw edges precisely along the borders of any polygroups. This means you will need to define each surface on the mesh you need separated by a hard edge as separate polygroups. This will be much easier if you keep it in mind from the beginning of the project as you work. For complicated high resolution meshes, the PolyGroupit plugin may provide other options.

When using ZRemsher to convert to low poly geometry, remesh first at a high target polycount then use the “Half” option to ZRemesh further until it can no longer maintain the form. Sometimes you want a high value to the “Smooth Groups” slider, other times you will want this at zero. Use Zmodeler to touch up problem areas. Stray polygons of a different polygroup or awkward topology along an edge area common problems that may cause local issues. This type of geometry may not be able to be seen unless you smooth the mesh to relax in in an area. Once you work out the issues and have very clean, well defined polygroups, you can usually send it through ZRemesher then use the Geometry> Crease> Crease PG to crease all the edges at once for subdividing. Or use Dynamic subdivision to preview the mesh with smoothing non-destructively.

:slight_smile:

Nice. Thanks for the thorough answer. This helped a lot for the realities.