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When do you use Zremesher when modeling?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I was curious if there was a time when modeling with 4R6, that some of you have found to be the best time to utilize Zremesher.

Do you use it when you know you are done with your modeling? Pre-texturing? Run it whenever you want to clean up your mesh in general, topology wise so your mesh density is more uniform?

So far all I have used Zbrush for all intents and purposes solely for illustration. I am wanting to design more functional models now for game engines and animation.

Any insight into Zremesher and when you utilize it in your workflow would be great!

Thank you all!
Joshua

#2

I believe the Q remesher has been replaced,with Zremesher.!4R6 P2 No?

#3

Bah, yes exactly. Thank you for correcting my oversight.

#4

As I understand it from my training from Digital Tutors, it is used to gain more polys on your geometry to gain additional detail without doing any sub dividing or remeshing. For example, you paint a mask over an area on your model where you want more poly’s and invertthe mask. This inturn protects the areas of the model that will not get zRemeshed. Then click zRemesher and the unmasked geometery will now have a higher/denser poly count for details and etc…

So you could be sculpting a rock face representing a cliff on a mountain and desire to sculpt a narrow ledge that you can pull polys from the cliff surface however there are not enough polys to do so or if you do so it will stress the poly’s available so that detail would be greatly impacted. So you mask out an area and invert it, then zRemesh to get the polys to pull out for your narrow ledge. You zRemesh as much as you needed to get the polys you desire to work with.

An alternative would be to use Dynamesh where you can remesh on the fly as you sculpt.
If you do not use Dynamesh then you can just remesh as needed but I belive this impacts your whole mesh however.

#5

I was curious if there was a time when modeling with 4R6, that some of you have found to be the best time to utilize Zremesher.

Do you use it when you know you are done with your modeling? Pre-texturing? Run it whenever you want to clean up your mesh in general, topology wise so your mesh density is more uniform?

There are a few times I find it to come in handy.

Final retopology is the bigger one for me. Typically I have my sculpt done up and polypainted, and then I’ll retopologize and create the final mesh with UVs (using xnormal to bake the diffuse, ao, and normal maps).

If I created a character using dynamesh instead of using zspheres or an existing basemesh, then I’ll probably use something like zremesher as soon as I get the main shapes established (before I start working on the smaller details). I just like being able to step up and down subdivision levels

#6

Interesting I hadn’t though of using it for environmental modeling. I have really only considered it for character retrotopology. Thanks for the suggestion!

I personally pretty much always use DynaMesh, typically no larger than 128 for my sculpts, push the geometry as far as I can before subdividing and then continue to sub-d when I need more geometry.

#7

I think I am going to try this approach on my next sculpt. I fiddled around with ZRemsher on my fully detailed and polypainted model and it seemed as if my model was quite boxy after the remesh. Which is understandable, but my poly count was still pretty high. I hadn’t baked my normal maps and such yet so that would have been the main reason.

I think that using ZRemsher after you define your main shapes would work really well to insure good poly density. But when you want to retopo, I think it would be best to still take your model into something like 3D Coat or Topogun to transfer maps. But to be honest I really, really hate having anything to do with UV’s. But I am trying to figure out the best way handle them because I am trying to grow my Game Assets portfolio.

Does anyone have experience using the UV Master along side ZRemesher? I can imagine that ZRemesher could really help UV Master work well.

Thanks again!
Josh

#8

Hi ,not sure of your flow but this works for me. Save File ,just in case!
1 take hi res , delete lower levels.
2 duplicate hi res, rename low
3 zremesh , do it as many times as needed, to get a base mesh low, use zremesh guide brush if needed.
Once I am happy with low res base,
4 run mesh thru uv master, now you have mapped uvs.( I always go to the texture and click the new texture from uv check make sure map is correct, then turn off)
5, now I subdivide the low res enough to capture detail from high res.
6.with low res above high res and selected, project all button.(you may have to experiment with projection settings to find best that work for you)
7 , sometimes if wonky, you can smooth out the projected low res, and project a second time,

I have done the smooth and project three or four times to get an accurate mesh, especially if going very low res,
If your hires model was painted , it will transfer to new low res during projection. It should ask when you project.
then you can just do , button texture new from poly paint, uvs are there and ready to create normal and displacement . This has worked great for me since R6 came out.
Hope this helps. DJ I copied this from my post over on CG Society, answering Similar Question! Dalmo

#9

When it comes to UV master, I find I get the best results by setting up polygroups to match the UV islands that I want. Sometimes I might even break one island into 2 or more polygroups to ensure that it puts the seams exactly where I want them, as they can be quickly and easily stitched back in another program.

As for using other programs to retopologize, I do this to (at least for the final retopology, not if I’m just retopologizing to sculpt). I still find it can still be pretty quick to let zremesher handle the bulk of the work, and then touch up some trickier areas externally.