Thanks for your work rasta… I think that rig of zspheres would be usefull, actually I bought zbrush 3 impresed by that feature. I admit im a little frustrated because it doesnt work. Do you belive the BIND button in the TOPOLOGY menu was meant for that? I hope that they will fix this soon…
How did you get visible zlines? Mine are so thin I can’t see them (annoying).
did you run the zscript?
Andreseloy
Huan:
I’ve done that, the mesh made from a PM3D is often asymmetric with missing links. It doesn’t look anything like underlying geometry.
Were you addressing me?
I’m not sure what I’m doing differently. I know exactly what you’re talking about with the missing-disconnected lines and the asymmetry, and I’ve been wary of doing the obj import because I lose my scaling. If I find the time I may just publish my whole workflow, because I’ve got a few things that I do a bit differently, and any one of them might be the missing link. I know it’s small consolation when you’re still broken, but the fix is out there.
Edit:
Come to think of it, my initial mesh may have come from an obj. I’ll run some tests over my lunch break to see if the polymesh conversion works on a native ztool.
Edit:
Ugh. I’ve gone and tried to reproduce my results with a couple of tools that I had previously been having trouble with, but I couldn’t even reproduce the bad results to get a functional test. I also just checked my workflow against the method in the opening of this thread, and it seems to match up better than I thought. I wish I could find you a usable answer…
billrobertson42
How did you get visible zlines? Mine are so thin I can’t see them (annoying).
Like this:
-
Load a mesh, position it and klick EDIT.
-
Activate a Zsphere from the Tool-palette
-
press Topology -> select and select the mesh-model. (So, skip the usual Rigging-palette-step)
-
Now press ‘Edit Topology’. You will see your mesh-object as a yellow net (very impressive at the first time :eek: )
-
Press ‘Convert to Main’, and you see what we have on our pictures.
Normally you would now deactivate the ‘Edit topology’-Button to have a functional rigg as if you did it in the normally descripted way, but if you do so now, ZBrush jumps lately then immediately into data-nirwana, if it didn’t do so before in Step 5).:rolleyes:
Oh, excuse me, sorry!!
I was thinking you ask me
Andreseloy
Sorry if this appears twice . It didn’t seem to get in first try.
Thanks for the great tutorial Rimasson.
To Grey32. Turn off Projection in Rigging before pressing “A” to get the preview geometry.
I get the same results as the others with the missing-disconnected lines when using imported obj’s.
Would have thought this issue would have been resolved during beta testing no?
Hey guys. For my model posted earlier, all I had to do was change the projection strength to -1, instead of 1, and it projected like it should have. There are still a few problems, but these are fairly small.
Dunno if this will help anybody else. It doesn’t fix all the problems, but it’s a start I suppose. I’ll keep playing around with it.
I’m sorry to be dense here…I was wondering if someone could expalin what is sure to be an obvious point to me .
There seems to be a step missing after all this. After Ive edited the mesh, Im still left with the original model, the cloned model, and the wierd zpshere mesh tool. Simply exiting “Edit Topology” mode doesnt seem to update my cloned mesh with the topology changes. If the process requires me to make a skin from the zsphere tool mesh, then I lose my subd levels…which I had hoped was preserved with this process.
Im sure its something horribly obvious IM not getting. Thanks for your patience. This whole process seems like it could benefit from another couple levels of automation for dummies like me.
Bingo:
You do have to create an adaptive skin to store the new topology, but fear not…
There are a couple of things you can do to modify and preserve your subdivision levels, but one thing to keep in mind is that ZBrush allows you to rebuild levels of subdivision as far down as your mesh will support. Let me tell you, I almost wept when I found that out… I distinctly remember taking an old model and taking out half of the CV’s manually in Maya. It took me almost two days. God, I love ZBrush.
Forget sub-tools. We need sub-threads 
Plakkie. Thanks for your response on my post #124. With your help and the
other posters on this thread I’m finally making progress.
Part of my problem was that I had accidentally left in one of the ploygroups
from Francois ‘extra’ hand zspheres. The extra polygons from this mesh
were clearly driving the new mesh generation crazy.
Last night I started with just the ‘fingers’ from Francois tut’, kept
going through the mess and eventually got a clean mesh.
I only ran into problems again as I got down the model back to the toes.
Sometimes though, previewing a partial mesh just creates a mess. And it’s
very hard to pin down whats causing the problem. Anyone got any tips
for that?
For example. As I got back down to the ‘toes’ on this model. I started seeing polygons connecting back from the toes to the knees! It wasn’t
obvious what was causing that. Anyone got any tips/procedures for
spotting and fixing problems in a mesh that refuses to ‘close’?
Now if only I’d clicked off ‘Edit Topology’ before I saved the tool 
Still I’ll know better next time.
G32
Yes…but since you dropped the copy’s res way down to edit its topology, dont you lose most of you sculpted detail from the highest resolutions? I mean, you could generate a very high res skin from the zsphere retopo (or you could in theory…all my attempts have produced disastrous Star Trek transporter-accident results), and reconstruct down to get subdivision levels back, but since it was generated from lo poly mesh you may as well work your way back up at that point…?
It doesnt matter, I suppose. This stuff all seems a bit quirky for me at this point. It just sounded for a second like you go back in ZB, and take care of problem geometry on an in-progress high resolution sculpted mesh, but I should have known theres still no subsitute for going in with a clean, well flowing mesh to begin with. Serves me right for looking for a lazy solution.
I’ll wait for the “Retopologising for Dummies” plug in, which Im sure will eventually make its way out 
.
Scott, If I’m not understanding you right, please correct me. Do not give up upon the Topology Tool yet, I don’t think you will be loosing your subdiv levels.
-Say, you made a head with 6 levels of subdiv.
-You clone it, bring the subdive level down to 1 or 2.
-You reselect the high subdiv head, and press the ZSpere tool.
-You follow the next few steps, until you can edit topology.
-If you now press ‘a’ you should see a low division mesh of your original highpoly head.
-If you go out of preview again, and select Rigging:Projection, and preview again, the mesh should look more like the original. But: it’s still low poly.
-NOW, if you go to Adeptive Skin menu, and set the Desity slider to, say… six, and enter preview, you should see a very high division mesh resembling your own original head very much.
-If you press Make Adaptive Skin the desity levels transfer in six subdivision levels in a brand new retopologized head model.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, or this is not what you’re looking for.
Cheers,
Plakkie
Rastaman, I couldn’t get this to work. Tried a few times. There aren’t too many steps so I think I’m loosing my mind. Can you post a ZScript?
I have much difficulty understanding what Convert to Main actually does. I’ve pressed it a few times now, and nearly all the time got a tool/model with no visible geometry. When do I use Convert to Main and how should I do it?
Rastaman,
hard to decide if I should make a front page header from that technique you described in post #148. I got it to work on the demo-head model for a few seconds, and it was very cool, but Zbrush keeps crashing after a few sec´s, so I definately agree that this feature is underdeveloped as of yet, and therefore not usable. On the other hand it´s a very cool technique if it would work, so worth the mention…
what do you guys think? Should the front page mention every possible option, even if they are quirky?
I think is time to take a deep breath and see what of the issue has reproductibility manner and what not…
then i suggest to make a break review to allow a more ordered following of the point that are more debatable.
Andreseloy
ps: im now reviewing all the tips and cheking what function and what no also wich zscript are easy to follow and so on…