Why does ZBrush suddenly care if I have tri's?

mdeforge

Opened up my tool this morning to see that I needed to reconstruct subdiv. When I tried to, it came back and said the mesh contained triangles and that the operation was cancelled.

My mesh has had triangles this entire time... not sure what the beef is now. Yesterday I used to GoZ to export to Maya to do some UV work then sent it back to ZBrush. I don't remember editing any geometry, but even then, like I said, there's always been some tri's in this mesh.

I have the OBJ of correctly UV'd model, and the tool of the mesh that doesn't want it's subdivisions reconstructed. I'm basically just trying to get my high res sculpt back.

I hear things about Project All and Remeshing, but I'm not really comfortable with either of them. Is that something I should be looking into or would it just be faster to redo the two hours of UV'ing? The silhouette has not changed.

EDIT: I started to import the OBJ with the correct UV's in as a subtool, and then ZBrush somehow picked up it was the same mesh and asked to transfer the high res details over finally. Why that isn't the same as sending back GoZ from Maya, I don't know, but I guess I'll keep that in mind in the future.

I got my subd's back, but my mesh is extremely dark now... changing the lights or getting rid of the polypaint doesn't change that.

EDIT EDIT: FFS, apparently that whole process turns the mask on. Just turned it off.

Lol... I swear half the time typing out the issue into a post solves it. Thanks PC

cryrid

It's not suddenly caring; you could never reconstruct levels below one with triangles. It's not so much a polygon reduction technique as it is reverse subdivision. If there was anything to reconstruct, your mesh would have been currently all quads (the triangle being 3 quads). Once it hits topology like that, it would have to turn into guesswork that is beyond simple reconstruction.

started to import the OBJ with the correct UV's in as a subtool, and then ZBrush somehow picked up it was the same mesh and asked to transfer the high res details over finally.

If it detects that it is the same mesh, then there should be no message asking to transfer the detail over. It will just update the UVs and make any required translations to the existing verts. If that message appears then it means it's seeing it as a different mesh (different vertex order, or new/less verts) and transferring the detail over is basically trying to project it (which isn't always as accurate).