I know that for Reconstruct Subdiv to work you need to avoid triangles, and you need to have Enable UV on. But what else makes it so that ZBrush is unable to reconstruct subdiv?
I thought it may have been irregular poly-counts, but I used poly reduction to get some more desirable counts and still can not do it.
Is there anything I could edit that may possibly “fix” this mesh so I am able to reconstruct subdiv?
May need to refresh your UVs (assuming you’re not getting any other error.)
Try deleting your UVs and then recreating.
-K
Tried that, no good.
All the error says is “Unable to reconstruct lower subdiv level - operation canceled”.
In order for it to work, the current mesh must be something that could be derived by dividing a model. This means that the organization of the polygons plays a role.
For example, let’s say you have four polygons in a 2x2 arrangement or a 1x4 arrangement. Either of these would be able to be reconstructed because they are both ways that a single polygon could be divided to get four.
But what if you had three polygons with another one attached above the middle one? You still have four polygons, but their layout is such that there’s no way to make a single polygon and still keep the same shape.
Now imagine that on a much bigger scale, with hundreds or thousands of polygons. ZBrush does a pretty amazing job of figuring out how to group the polygons together to allow reconstruction. But some geometry just isn’t possible.
Thank you for the response.
That makes sense. Well, I have an idea where the problem might be from then.
I used a pre-made model as a starting point for mine. Worked fine thru detailing and ZBrush, but when it was time for me to implement it in our game engine, the mesh was not “closed” inside the eye sockets and mouth and gave some graphic anomalies with shadow rendering. But when I went fix this at the lowest subdiv level, this is when I realized I lost them.
I found out the eye sockets being basically like one end of an open cylinder prevented me from reconstructing it, so I “closed” the eye sockets and reconstruct subdiv seemed to work okay.
So I did the same for the mouth and continued work. I probably should have tested reconstructing after fixing the mouth but I didnt. My guess would be there that the mesh got the geometry uneven somehow.
Thanks for the advice! I was thinking it was uneven poly counts or something lol. I’ll see what I can do to try to “fix” this now.
One final question… If I can not find the problem geometry that is stopping me from reconstructing… am I right to assume that my best bet would be to just retopologize manually?
That would be my approach. 