Zbrush opposite of subdivide

Sunray

Hey i was just wondering if you can sdiv down like you have your dynameshed 8 mil poly model is there any way to get that down without losing the ability to go back to the high detail and yes i know that you could decimate it but i'm hoping you can do the opposite of a sdiv and i just don't know how if anyone knows if this is a a thing or not please let me know

thanks

AtticusMars

There's a reconstruct subdivisions button in the geometry palette that will let you get back lower subdivisions.

With dynamesh however the answer is probably no because it creates a lot of poles and triangles that can't be simplified. At best, if there are no triangles you might be able to get 1 subdivision level.

Your best bet would be to retopo and reproject your details. Either by manual retopo or through zremesher.

musashidan

Exactly as Atticusmars said:)

reconstructing subdiv levels strictly works on 100% quad meshes. Just like subdividing splits every quad in 4; reversing it is also quad-based, meaning triangles can't be calculated. And considering Dynamesh relies heavily on tris you can see why it's not possible.

cryrid

Its not even a matter of triangles, if the geometry you have can not be created through subdivision then its not something that can be magically reconstructed. So unless your current model was created through subdivision at some point, reconstruction will rarely ever work (unless you have a squircle or a grid, and even that is not a guarantee ). 

For what you want to do, use zremesher to create a duplicate version of the mesh with fewer polygons. Subdivide that while projecting the detail over. 

musashidan

cryrid said:

Its not even a matter of triangles,

The warning generated by ZB on fail states that the geometry contains tris. The thing is that once a mesh with tris is subdivided, those tris are automatically converted to quads, so you can reconstruct the subdivs only as far as the original level that contained the tris. This would also be true of a dynamesh that was subdivided. So it is really a matter of tris.

Sunray

alright thanks for all the input guys