Dynamesh problems, weird wavy lines

JamesLarden

Hello again PolyCount, wasn't sure if I should make a seperate thread for this question but I decided to.

I'm following Fanny Vergne's tileable texture tutorial for making a hand painted style stone slab (dem alliterations) on Vertex #2 and i've followed it pretty much to the letter, the only difference is that her polygroup only contain 1 slab, while mine contain up to 3-4 slab.

This is what's confusing me because I chose the exact same resolution as her (290) and my dynamesh comes out looking like this:

I feel like i'm mising something obvious here because i've never used dynamesh before, thank in advance for any replies.

Bartalon

Dynamesh is dependent on your mesh scale. You can simply adjust your Dynamesh resolution until you get the results you want, or you can try using Tool > Deformation > Unify to let ZBrush try to re-scale your model to an appropriate size before activating Dynamesh.

DireWolf

you may want to turn off smooth as well.

JamesLarden

Thnks for the replies guys, I did what you said, while my object was ahole I unified it then split it into subgroups before I applied the dynamesh, I also turned off smooth, however i'm still getting the same results.

It's a little better but it appears to be skewing some of the edgeloops and the edges of the actual model still have the same wavy pattern.

Bartalon

Dynamesh won't be able to make perfectly straight edge loops all the time. When it comes down to it, such a minor difference between edge loops isn't going to affect your sculpting when you start subdividing anyway. If you're sculpting stone then you're probably going to end up using trim dynamic around all the edges so I wouldn't even worry about the slight crumpling going on around the edges either.

If you're still concerned about the bent edges, I think there's a blur setting under the Dynamesh options that you can tweak, maybe that will help.

JamesLarden

Bartalon wrote: »

Dynamesh won't be able to make perfectly straight edge loops all the time. When it comes down to it, such a minor difference between edge loops isn't going to affect your sculpting when you start subdividing anyway. If you're sculpting stone then you're probably going to end up using trim dynamic around all the edges so I wouldn't even worry about the slight crumpling going on around the edges either.

If you're still concerned about the bent edges, I think there's a blur setting under the Dynamesh options that you can tweak, maybe that will help.

Thanks very much for the info, I had a feeling it wouldn't affect it too much on stone but I thought I messed up some setting and didn't want it to affect my model.

Is there a reason I shouldn't just use the divide function instead of Dynamesh? It seems to produce the same result.

JedTheKrampus

Dynamesh ensures that you have an even and predictable distribution of polygons, and that you can get an even and predictable distribution of polygons no matter what topology-destroying brushes you use or how you change the shape (see: crumple brush, inflate brush, move brush, snake-hook brush.) In the case of stone slabs using Dynamesh or not shouldn't really matter much, because you're not going to be changing the shape much, and the brushes you would use for that don't warp the topology very much (if there's anything that would, it would be DamStandard and that's still pretty minor.) You can achieve a similar result for very high-resolution surfaces by duplicating the subtool and using Decimation Master, then ZRemesher and then projecting your new subtool onto your previous subtool using ProjectAll (I usually project, then subdivide, then project, then subdivide, then project, and so on. This yields really accurate, well-distributed, high-resolution results.)

Bartalon

What JedTheKrampus said. Basically, If you have really long, thin polygons, you'll still have really long, thin polygons if you simply subdivide. Dynamesh essentially replaces your mesh with a new one containing evenly sized polygons so when you sculpt you get an even amount of detail across your entire mesh.

It's not uncommon for someone to start with a sphere and stretch it around to get a desired shape (like a bust), then use dynamesh to get back the detail that would otherwise be lost from elongated polygons. Once you have a solid base and are ready to start sculpting, you should disable Dynamesh and subdivide it as you would normally.