Zbrush extraction thickness

thirtyCruisers

Hello. I'm trying to make a model in Zbrush using the extract feature. The problem is, that the extracted part is too thick. It is said here:
http://docs.pixologic.com/reference-guide/tool/polymesh/subtool/
that one should use 0.01 thickness for cloth and 0.03 for leather. When I extract such values from a sphere, it looks fine:


However, when I try to extract with the same 0.03 thickness from a model, I get this:

Is it possible to somehow set the "range" of the thickness for it to change between zero to the thickness I get now when I extract 0.03 from the model (or a little more)? Or do I have to deal with it? This problem makes the slider impossible to use, because I have to set really small values with it, and typing in the values takes a lot of time too.
I hope it can be fixed somehow. Or if I am doing something wrong, please tell me. Thank you.

SuperFranky

Thickness depends on the scale of your mesh. If you want to set it right, you can press Unify in the deformation tab.

thirtyCruisers

Thank you, but it didn't work. The mesh changed in size, but the extracted part is still as thick. Or even thicker.

jfitch

I'm a bit confused as to the why. Are you trying to make sure you have uniform thickness for certain pieces on different parts of your model? You may have to make a combined model and then do your extraction. The nice part about that is you then have all of your leathers or whatever as one subtool. If you don't want that you can go to polygroups-->autogroup and then separate by polygroup.

thirtyCruisers

jfitch wrote: »

Are you trying to make sure you have uniform thickness for certain pieces on different parts of your model?

No, but if I did than your advice would be useful, thank you.
It appears I was wrong about everything being okay when extracting from a sphere. Here is what happens when I extract with a thickness of 1:

It is way too much. The useful range of the thickness (for me, at least) is something like -0.15 to 0.15. Bigger values are useless. This is what I want to get when I extract with the thickness of 1:

I watched a tutorial about hard surface modelling, where the part extracted with the thickness of 1 looks like this:

That is how I'd like my extraction to work. Zbrush version in the tutuorial seems to be older than mine, can it be the cause? Or could I have messed up something in the preferences?
The reason why I want this - to speed up the process, to be able to change the thickness more finely, to make the whole "amplitude" of available values useful, not just the tenth part of it. If it is possible at all.