Zbrush: Best way to convert/prepare dynamesh sculpt for detailing?

Adrian Pieroni

I've always finished sculpting the blockout in Zbrush, and then used zremesher to evenly quadrangulate my sculpt for proper subdividing and detailing. Zremesher has that effect though, where it kind of melts your sculpt and you lose some form, which I guess you can get back by storing a morph target of your dynamesh sculpt. Maybe there's a better way. What do the professionals think/use? Would converting my dynamesh blockout to an adaptive skin be better?

Neox

well the thing is, automatic solutions can't do what you can do, it is great if you just need SOME topology. If you need something specific to maintain shape where needed, you will for a foreseeable time be better with doing the retopo by hand.

Adrian Pieroni

So you'd say it's common practice to finish a dynamesh blockout of a creature for example, and then manually retopo a base mesh from it to subdivide + sculpt in zbrush?

Neox

yes totally,the time it needs to clean a zremesher mesh is often mote than just doing a retopo with full control yourself. zremesher is great when you need a mesh thats sculptable but it not so great if the topology is important.
But also it doesn't matter if it is a common thing, what would be your conclusion if a tech doesn't work in your case and you already know a workflow that does?

MercurialForge

Not to stomp on Neox's comment but I know plenty of sculptors that have mastered retopo with zReMesher and actually create their base for the final sculpt with it. Simply create your new quad base with zReMesher, go to division 4/5 and project the detail from the dynamesh onto the divided quad mesh. Now proceed to the final stages of the sculpt with that.

zReMesher is super powerful and can produce bad results if your not detailed with how you place curves on the mesh. You can certainly retopo by hand, but I think your losing a lot of time by doing that.

Lastly you can often salvage much if not all of the zReMesh'ed mesh in the final lowpoly topo for game stages.

But most importantly it only helps if you want to learn it and make it part of your workflow. If doing it by hand is faster for you, than go with that.

Neox

Okay then, how do you avoid endless spirals with zremesher?
How do you get it to create proper circular loops for eyes or the mouth?
Every time i wanted to create something that is not just nice evenly spread sculpt topology zremesher failed for me.
For a sculpting mesh it is totally fine, for production ready topology not so much - but i could be wrong. My experience showed me, cleaning away the messy parts of a zremeshed mesh takes at least the same time as making a quick retopo yourself.
But maybe i am using it wrong.

MercurialForge

Woh, we're all on the same z-journey. I'm just informing that there are options.

zremesher guides are super powerful and with some time to learn to the ins and outs you can avoid spirals. I've output base meshes without spirals before, but it takes some tweaking, like all things.

I'm not saying you have to use it, or anyone else. I'm just stating, the option is there if your interested in taking the time to master it.

This example isn't perfect, but it's solid.

Swizzle

This post from Zbrush Central has some tips on how to avoid spirals with Zremesher: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?162584-Carver-s-Sketchbook-%28tutorial-added-Pg-4%29&p=1030280&viewfull=1#post1030280

It probably won't get you anything useable for low-poly work, but it's very handy for high-poly stuff.

Neox

yeah as said, the result is allright for sculpting, but it far from production ready. cleaning the face, fingers or the wrists, the bellybutton etc. so many areas that would be SO simple to do in 3dcoat (or blender, need to test the new features). Anyways its alright, i'm not saying don't use zremesher, just that you should be careful and depending on your target usual retopo would be the better choice.
What swizz linked looks actually much better should test doing it this way - looks like something, that if it needs cleaning would be realy fast to fix.

Adrian Pieroni

OliverBarraza, that is reassuring to see that your first response on this thread is basically an elaboration on the approach that I have been naturally gravitating towards. That IS basically the method that I have been using, with the greatest advantage being that zremesher will create evenly distributed and proportioned quads with decent edge flow, which subdivide nicely when I'm reading to begin detailing. It does create 5-edged poles - but I don't find those to be an issue for subdividing, and as you've addressed, there are ways to control how much mesh density zremesher allocates to specific areas, such as using polypaint and using blue (less), and red (more). I suppose it's true that the morph target brush is underrated in its practical use for reacquiring those details lost from the dynamesh sketching phase when zremeshing. I've certainly found it to work great.

Perhaps I have been on the right track with this part of the production pipeline...

Adrian Pieroni

I think maybe what we're getting at is that a fully manual retopo is indeed necessary, but saved for towards the end when you're creating the final game-ready mesh from the finished sculpt.

MercurialForge

Yes Adrian, I would save the full retopo till the end to save on upfront work load. Things change during the process and to lock in topology so early can be a danger and a possible time sink. I'm in favor of keeping options open ended. But I fully believe no matter what any of us tell you, you'll gravity towards a process that makes the most sense to you.

FourtyNights

In my opinion as well, ZRemesher is good for cleaning up your basemesh only, and you should always retopo it by yourself to get the topology you see is best suited for the rigging and animation process, if it's about characters.

eenseyn

Not much to add here, just thought I'd say thanks. I'm new to sculpting, and this thread helped clear up some of my doubts.

oglu

as Neox mentioned, if you need good topo there is no way around to do it by hand... i use zremesher or autoretopo in mudbox often to get "some" topo... delete all parts that dont work and fill in the handmade topo...