How complicated do you make the ear topology?
@ wormball:
Is this a question for me ?
I’m not sure what ear you mean.
This is a pure test model, maybe resempling to a cactus.
Can anyone fill me in on the importance of un-pressing the Edit Topology button before saving your tool?
I’ve seen it mentioned on this thread but personally I can’t see what difference it makes whether it’s pressed or not when saving…
Its for anybody. MY model is a woman and is currently bald. She has ears but the topology for her is based on zspheres and not very good.
Great thread everyone thankyou,
I just deleted my question as it was covered by Nolan.
I just found my answer at the top of this page (doh)!
Thanks
cal
@ Nolan:
If you want to save your topo-setup, it makes no differences whether you have pressed or unpressed the Edit topolgy-button.
The file is saved in both cases.
The only thing is when you have reloaded it later with stored active button, first unpress and repress the button to be enabled to see your topo-mesh without faults when you now edit it further.
But that advice was for 3.0, in 3.1 you can be glad if you see anything of your topo-mesh (Bug in 3.1).
Here’s a work-around that I’ve just experimented with that seems to work.
Even though your tool that your retopologizing is still considered to be a Polymesh3D, try pressing the Make Polymesh3D button and then try editing the topology on the newly-created Polymesh3D tool.
My above descriped Topo-problem is solved thanks to --E–.
After having pressed ‘Edit Topolgy’ and then performed Ctrl + Shift + LMB-Click (unmask all) , the low-poly-retopo-mesh is visible and editable again.
I forgot to perform my own advice that I gave in my tutorials.:o
Seems I’m getting old. :rolleyes:
But the other point is that this masking-problem is now current in 3.1 where 3.0 had this problem only a few times.
So it would be nice if Pixologic could fix this with the next patch.
@ WingedOne:
Yes, that’s also an option, but mainly the above descriped behavior is caused by hidden mesh-parts.
But if unmasking doesn’t work, then making it PolyMesh 3D is surely a last option one should try.
Thanks for clearing that up for me Rastaman.
One more question - is it possible to pose a model that has multiple subtools? My understanding is that you have to combine your subtools in to one mesh in order to be able to pose it using transpose or rigging techniques (a problem when the subtools are all in the multi-million poly bracket). I was just wondering if there was a workaround that anyone is aware of that would allow you to retain the subtools or somehow reinstate them after posing?
Nolan:
I am not quite sure, but I think there is a separate thread about this.
Try the search-function.
Right again Rastaman! A search for posing + subtools yielded the relevant threads 
Hi, RastaMan.
Great thread.
Is there an issue with Topology and 3.1? In 3.0 I could attach a mesh to a root zsphere and Shift/Click and draw out new topology. In 3.1, even if I use native polymeshes that come with the program (like the star tool) I can’t get new topology to draw out. I have brush size set to 1, x symmetry turned on and am in edit mode.
Thanks!
~S.~
Snark you say something like this…mesh+zsphere root+edit topology=new mesh
Andreseloy
ps:this is a quick test now but i have been able to work in that way
I think Snark has a similar problem than I had with my setups, but topo-drawing (beside that it’s slower) works so far.
Do first Ctrl + Shift + LMB-Click in an empty place of the canvas to reveal all hidden parts.
Then Ctrl + LMB-draw rectangle in an empty place of the canvas to unmask all.
It seems that generally when you enter the topo-features something is hidden, the hell knows why. :evil:
So whatever you do with topology, first perform this (and maybe also turn shortly move, scale or rotate on and LMB-Click your mesh to deactivate the transpose-line) to ensure a clean setup for your work.
Pixologic should urgently correct these things, because they lead to unnecessary confusion and extra work that slows down all workflow, especially when you need to perform all steps again and again each time you restart ZBrush. :rolleyes:
Hi. Good to find this thread.
I am having a problem to get my original UVs back onto a retopologized mesh.
I see many here have similar problems. Has a solution been mentioned somewhere?
Thanx, people, great comunity.
After any retopo-action that alters the resulting mesh compared to the original mesh (more or less points / polys) , you cannot use your old UV-set with the new retopoed one anymore so far I know.
You must create a completely new one.
But you can transfer all your polypainting along with the details in the same Zsphere-setup-procedure.
I kind of figured out how to use the topology. Although I’m not sure how to edit the topology ztool that I saved when I try to restart zbrush. So it seems I’m limited to a one session with the the topology tools rather than being able to save progress as I slowly build the topology. 
No womball,
you can surely save your Zsphere-topology-setup in Edit-topology-status as a normal .ztl-file.
When you later reload it, draw it on the canvas and press EDIT just like you do with any other mesh.
The only thing you MUST do before you can proceed is (beside my above advices to unhide and unmask all) that you deacivate and reactivate the ‘Edit topology’-Button one time to get access to your topology again.
Rastaman (and Andre),
Thanks for the reply.
Is there a way to connect one point to another directly? I mean, can I move one point on top of another point and connect them somehow? I find that often after I have completed a section of retopo and checked all points for connection that some are no longer connected. Instead of deleting and re-building, is there a way to just drop one point onto another? This is something quite easily done in Maya but I would like to stay in ZBrush.
Thanks!
~S.~
Rastaman, hi. Yeah, I understand that. The thing is, I am retopoing with an external mesh (with nice UVs on it), and when I make the the adaptive skin with it I use a subdivision of one in the Topology panel. So, point count remains the same. When making the adaptive skin with mesh ZBrush seems to mess up the pointorder.
So no re-importing of the same cage with the clean original UVs (which should have been carried along in the first place).
I don´t understand that. It seems so integral for any game model workflow not to break external UVs at any cost…
That also means that we can´t re-import original tools, perhaps even with multiple UVs, over the vacuformed one.
Or it forces us to remake the UVs externally after making a new adaptive skin.
If that´s the case ZB becomes useless for my particular workflow, oh man.