zbrush layer introducing artifacts

thomasp

hi,

is the following a known bug in zbrush layers? achieved by toggling in and out of record mode about 50 times. artifacts do show up a lot earlier though:



btw. that's Z4R6 Windows, latest available update installed.
and this is how it applies to layers used to create head variations...




a tiny bit destructive for my liking.
fixes and workarounds appreciated.

thomasp

no takers? nobody using layers?

SuperFranky

That's very unusual. I use 4r6 and Layers all the time and I've never seen anything like it. Are you sure you don't have hidden masks going on? What kind of deformations do you apply? Have you tried that with Dynamesh?

thomasp

thought so too when it was pointed out to me. makes layers appear useless for assets that receive a lot of tweaking over the course of a production.

no there are no masks going on, these are just default zbrush meshes treated to the move brush with layer recording toggled a bunch of times.

Ponk

Did you deleted some lower subdivs or changed anything in tool's UV? How many Subdiv levels those meshes have?

jfitch

Does smoothing solve the issue? If not you can always bake the layer and move on. I don't really do anything with layers unless I'm detailing or moving something around so I'm not entirely sure.

thomasp

smoothing does not solve the issue and sure, you could fudge it all by baking the layer and fixing the issues but if you wanted something like blendshapes on layers for facial animation and could resonably expect to tweak these extensively and thus toggling record mode a fair number of times - then it seems corruption would creep in and destroy your blendshapes over time.

try it yourself with a mesh in Z using the steps outlined above. happens for me on any mesh i import or generate in zbrush.

i usually avoid layers. now i know why.

JohnnyRaptor

Yeap im getting it too here. I tested first with switching layer visiblity on and off a ton of time, and that didnt cause any artefacts, but when i do the same with switching only the Record mode on and off, artefacts start appearing quite quickly!

Tried it in ZB 4r6 and 4R7-64bit, same result in both

thomasp

cheers, yes just tried it in 4R7 64bit myself with same result. will report this to pixo now.

cryrid

Its possible that a layer's record mode just isn't supposed to be toggled on and off 50 times. If you have heavy tweaks to make to an existing layer or are using blendshapes, it might be better to make them on a new layer and then merge down into the original layer? (Or does that produce artifacts too?)

Ponk

Its possible that pixologic didn't tested this enough and this is overall data handling bug. This need to be reported even if test case is ridiculous.

However, layer system in zbrush is very buggy and error-prone. I use it all the time and have learned lots of strange rituals to avoid fucking up my sculpts.

thomasp

just noticed that i've steadily been getting hits on my webspace from this 2.5 year old thread so it appears this topic is still being researched.

so just for reference: the issue was reported and the fix made it into 4R8 P2.