Merging Meshes (Zbrush)

retmia

Hi there polycounters,

I'm coming to you because there's something I can't find out how to resolve ...
I want to merge two meshes : A head (very dense) and a body (less dense), but without using Dynamesh because there are some areas in my sculpts that are denser in order to hold more details ... I've tried to use the bridging curve tool, but it doesn't work as I need ...

If after the operation, I only loose the area around the cut it's ok, I can resculpt
Reprojecting the mesh on a new one is just coming to my mind ... maybe it would be a nice solution .. ? How would you guys do ?

SuperFranky

Dynamesh one part to close the hole, buildup some clay there to bridge two parts so they appear "merged" and dynamesh it

Dave Jr

Merge the two subtools together before you dynamesh. Merge can be found under Subtool > Merge > Merge visible.

Then go to insert > pick the last mesh.

pior

Well, he specifically stated that he wasn't planning on using Dynamesh - probably because it would create a dense polygon soup thus losing the hierarchical density that he established already.

If some parts were already connected, the "close hole" tool could work. And indeed, it's a bit of a shame that the bridge brush is not able to bridge this kind of gap (I was just playing with this tool a few weeks ago for the exact same purpose and ended up being quite disappointed by it).

You could probably try to export the model into a mesh reconstruction/repair program like Meshlab and fix it there. There is a high chance for it to have a gap-filling tool able to do exactly what you want.

innagadadavida

What I was thinking of doing would be is to create an adaptive mesh from a zsphere. (sorry don't have zbrush in front of me so if my terminology is off than apologies.) with the necessary details that you need for the mesh to look as if it is one.
Take the bottom of the neck and the top of the neck and slice them into their own polygroups duplicating both of them into their own tool and Unify it later on down the road after the adaptive skin you created has been sliced down to exact match. You can even make a polymesh from both the top and bottom of it from your zsphere adaptive skin to make an exact match to connect both.
Since both the top and the bottom of the head and neck are now open and you have an open adaptive skin you can use the same bridge tool to connect both.
Problem should be solved.

JedTheKrampus

Just put an ornate collar over it. No one needs to know.

cryrid

Curve bridge is repeatedly work for me on some tests, even when I go out of my way to make sure the topology doesn't line up on either end. You just need to make sure that symmetry is turned off and that the density difference isn't too severe (polygroup-padding takes care of that though).



Other options:
If your model has some lower resolutions already then zsphere retopology should be able to quickly patch them together. It has a hard limit of copying 15k points/polygons though.

Otherwise I think dynamesh is still a good option for this; the only reason I wouldn't use it would be if there is a specific edgeflow you wish to preserve. If there isn't then dynamesh should quickly merge the two parts together, and you can then follow it up with zremesher in order to restore different regions of density (either through its density painting, or with local subdivision afterwards).

retmia

Thank You guys for the various answers !

As mentionned, I was trying to avoid to use dynamesh because some part of my model like the face and the hands are much more detailed than the rest of the body, so to keep the details I would need to use a very high dynamesh resolution and have to rework it to get all that back !

So after many tries and errors, plus youtube tutorials, I managed to make it work with your technique Cryrid ! Thank you for showing that it was possible ...
The trick was to make a wave around the edge and then hold shift to select the border !! hard to guess !

So now it can directly get into Decimation and Retopo !



Thank you again Everyone

pior

Thanks for stressing this out Cryrid ! I stand corrected - this is, indeed, the one situation where the bridge brush *does* work I think I got confused with the other situation that I was trying to use it for, which involved bridging arbitrary edges.

I am glad that you got it all sorted out Retmia ! Good stuff

RickReed123

One option is to make one part an IMM brush and then make a ploygroup around the target edge, draw out the IMM brush on the polygroup, position/scale the IMM and control-drag twice on background to merge the two.