Also do not forget to try a “tool > deformation > unify” on your mesh before you even start. A lot of times your mesh can be too big or too small for projections to work and you will get crazy spiking all over the place for no other reason.
make sure you have your transposeline snaped to z. snap your view with shift to front view, slect teh move tool (transpose) and draw a transposeline so that all circles of it are in one place till they dissapear! than project!
greetings, gordon
Hi E,
I tried your idea, but as when I unify both the High res and the retopoed low res they are different sizes. If I Unify the high res mesh then retopo it I get the above problem.
can you tyr to change the project range to -.10 and let me know if it makes any difference?
it’s a long shot but a problem i had giving me this result was also (apart from vertices ordering) some weird normal flipping…
sorry if it doesn’t help!
can someone else confirm this for me. recently i tried importing a mesh into the topology menu and got nothing, just the first parent zsphere orange topology dot, after much trial and error, i came to realize that zbrush has a limit on the amount of polys/zspheres the topology mesh can have when you try to import it, somewhere around 15,000.
That’s true, Spaceboy, the retopo-function can only handle a limited amount of polys in the (Edit-)topology-section.
When your imported target mesh has too much polys, Zbrush denies to work with it or crashes.
The only solution is to use less polys with your target mesh.
The crazy-spike-problem shown above can have several reasons.
Sometimes, especially when you mirrored a mesh and want to restore your sub-d-levels with a retopo-procedure using a mirrored subd-level 1 along with a high-subd-level to re-project your details, you will get this result.
A quick-retopo of the subd-level 1-mesh and using this new created low-poly-mesh in the topo-projection-process helps to solve it.
Sometimes also exporting the low-poly-mesh into another app and performing a ‘unify or allign normals’-procedure works.
And sometimes, only throwing this whole shi… into the trash an begin something new is the only solution.:lol:
Im at work at the moment so I cant read through all 700+ posts to see if someone has had this issue and fixed it…But my major issue is while everything up until the point of actually drawing new topology onto the mesh I see that my existing adjacent edges are disappearing when i click a new edge to attach to them. It does this over and over again on any area where I try to edit existing topology. Has this issue reached anyone else? If so, how did you guys fix this? or is it just a bug?
really could use the help on finishing this work project
THANKS!!!
When I have geometry on Topo and Rigg, editing existing geometry sometimes requires me to select empty space outside the model and then the disapearing act is no more. That doesnt happen when I simply retopo from scratch. Also, when I havent deselected properly, I get disapearing vertexes just by selecting them, sometimes. Dunno if that is your exact specific situation, hope it helps.
Hello piajartist: I found this trick works quite well. What you have to do after you select the Topo mesh adn hit “Edit Topology” is to use the combination of Shift+Ctrl and LMB on the empty space outside the model. It will then shows the whole topology lines without breaking.
Thanks a million for the posts about the disappearing edge issues, it worked!
Alright new issue though! 
Im feeling rather stupid and frustrated here at the end of the tutorial from Bonecradle and the steps on Page 1…
I get through all the steps until the last part where my new topology is done and I click ‘Tool>Projection>Projection’ so that it will map the high rez detail onto the new retopologized surface, and nothing changes, the topo is there but my layers are gone.
Maybe, and I think I am here, just Totally misunderstanding the function of retopologizing high rez ztl files with some 7 subdivision layers of detail(but of course retopo-ing it on the FIRST Sub level) and having the first sub level retopo translate onto the higher rez layers…
Like I said Im right there at the end but cant get it all the way there.
I tried using the Make Adaptive Skin feature since I saw that in Rastaman’s PDF tutorial and it just made me a sub level 1 retopoed mesh with no high rez layers from my original high rez mesh
Thoughts…
Hello ZBrushers,
I went through the entire thread but couldn’t find what I need (maybe I hurried…
) -great thread btw.-, so I’d like to ask for your help concerning 2 problems:
1.) I run into problems each time I try to retopo the inside mouth area of this monster. This is because even when I retopo from the inside, the retopoed mesh is connected to the retopo lines from the outside area and they mix up. On the upper pic you can view what I mean: the lines visible on the inside mouth area are actually lines from the outside.Up to now I wasn’t able to retopo the inside because of this problem.
Does anyone have a practical solution concerning retopologising these areas?
2.) On the two lower pics one can see that in the preview the retopoed mesh looks quite nice, only problem are those little marks/holes on the right instead the original crow feet wrinkles. Any idea what this is about?
(I hope you don’t get confused with my polypainted lay out lines)
Oliver, Du hast 'ne PM von mir.
Good luck.
Give thanks and praises to da Rastaman!
Danke nochmal für die Hilfe;).
hey i jus wanted to say thnx to everyone thats posted info on this thread, ive been experimenting with zsphere retopology for like a year now in zb3 and its awesome
actually i don’t know the reason behind making a new topology over the old one
i read that because to make the mesh friendly in animation (why also)and when i make a try i didnot see difference in polycount(the same subdivisions and treated as the old one that we make UVs, normal and dispalcenet maps)
!!!
what is the differnce
and how can i use it in highly detailed character in the animation???
thanks
Hurdy Gurdy Man and Rastaman (hehe cool name), it seems you sorted out the retopo in the mouth. Can you share your process? Did you export to 3d app and retopo then import as obj. Can you reply with enough info that it has the answer in the thread for next time someone does a search.
Hurdy Gurdy Man, would it be possible to see the image of the result, and I would like to see the rest of your character do you have a wip thread.
Hi Guys,
I understand how to retopogise up to a certain point. Basically I can draw the new mesh using my zsphere points.
The problem I am having is that I only wanted to retopo part of my head mesh. The nostril area of my nose to be precise.
So now I have the new topology made up and converted to a polymesh how do I exchange the old nostril area with the new mesh I have just made up ?
If I try and project the new mesh it just conforms to the shape, but doesnt actual change the topology.
Any help is appreciated 
Ta
Steve
Hi Steve, try Jason Welsh’s video Tuts, found here.
http://nz.youtube.com/profile_videos?p=r&user=cannedmushrooms&page=12
Video number 7 is retopology.
Cheers…will take a look