ZBrushCentral

Zphere/Adaptive Mesh Scaling Problems?

Hi there. I’m relatively new to Zbrush, but I am crash-coursing myself through making a few simple biped models, working off of Zspheres and concept sketching.

I’ve been working off of CannedMushroom’s biped tutorial for Zbrush 3.0
(http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=53087) and another for concept sketching- but neither touch on the problem that I am having with Zspheres.

I set up the concept sketch in a Normals reversed Cube (as per this tutorial) http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=50722

Make a new Zphere, and append the reversed cube as a subtool. It’s built facing the positive Z-axis etc; so I should be set to go. I can create the sphere model, but the subtool preview shows all of my joints “pinched” together.
The screenshot below shows the Zsphere setup and the adaptive skin preview.
http://www.rpi.edu/~jalbep/Zbrush/Zsphere_Problem01.jpg
http://www.rpi.edu/~jalbep/Zbrush/Zsphere_Problem02.jpg

As you can see, the mesh around the groin area is pinched badly, and conforms too closely to the sphere.

Through some trial/error, I’ve figured out that this has to do with how “big” Zbrush thinks that the Zsphere setup is. If I shrink a Zsphere down by a lot and then begin to add other spheres to it, the adaptive skin behaves more loosely, like it does in CannedMushroom’s tutorial.

All of my Zphere settings are at default. I haven’t touched any special settings.

Zbrush seems to have a lot of issues in general with no control over scale. Does anyone know how/why it’s behaving like it’s scaled up so high, and/or how I can tweak the way the adaptive mesh is calculated so that it behaves like it’s supposed to? (IE: in CannedMushroom’s Lesson 4 tutorial, where he has also not altered any settings).

in a way this actually makes sense if you understand how zspheres make an adaptive skin, try to imagine it as cubes, they don’t know they’re intersecting, no dynamics, know what i mean, so you need to tweak the res to get them to be more fluid.
you can either, add more zspheres near the joints, play with the membrane settings and minimal to child etc settings, those will yield better results.
also check out this plugin
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showpost.php?p=413028&postcount=109