Frustrated hobbyist with Dynamesh issues

vavavoom

****LATEST****

So, I spent way too long than i dare admit to get to this stage. Stopped/started, kept chipping away little by little when i had time and/or motivation.
Went through various sculpting materials too throughout sculpting before i finally ended up back at zbrush's standard 'basic material'. Is there a defacto material used among professionals when sculpting? i know 'red wax' is horrible!

Here's my thoughts thus far:
- Ears still need a lot more love.
- Top of skull needs a touch more sculpting here and there.
- Needs a good polish/ overall general refinement, make it sharper.
- Hair today, gone tomorrow (gonna have a bash at some hair soon...)
- Teeth, gums, mouth cavity work (there is a cavity now, but it's far from ready)

To anyone who can help, I have a question:
It's DYNAMESH at the moment. IF i'm were planning to retopo it to a game poly model, do i need to bother with ZEREMESHing it into a tidy looking geometry?
or can i just get looking good in dynamesh and leave it be?

***AND, crits much appreciated on anatomy
*****and, is there a way i bump this post to the top of the this thread without copying/pasting into the first post on the thread?








* Last one was just messing around with move tool a little on lips and eyebrows to get more of a feel of the anatomy.



END

Hi, i recently got stuck into trying to do some modelling after long long break.

My work flow:

1. Block out super low res Mesh

2. Slowly build up res to refine shape, add more detail

3. PROBLEM: i found my mesh flow getting quite ugly as i began shifting around edges, problems with high/low density areas...

4. SOLUTION: switch to Dynamesh

5. Contued along happily refining the details with no more worries about high/low density areas.

All seemed great, until i started refining the lips more and tried to create a mouth cavity.

evry time i re-dynamesh it looks like the face has melted somewhat, losing detail, AND it merges the lips together (see images)

BEFORE:

[IMG]http://i66.tinypic.com/2ccvwqb.jpg[/IMG]

AFTER:

[IMG]http://i64.tinypic.com/21e2ki9.jpg[/IMG]

I searched for ages trying to find solutions...  i set close holes option to 0, turned off blur, polishing, 

i tried randomly changing anything i could find in Zbrush that i thought might somewhow fix,

but to no avail.

If anyone has any kind of advice/solution, would be super apprecitated````

Thanks!

vavavoom

hmm... why no show images??

Anchang-Style

It's a normal thing that is based on how dynamesh treats objects that have a certain distance to each other. The usual way around this seems to be to model the inside of the mouth after you have gone through all the dynameshing (which you don't want to model everything with). Dynamesh is great if you want to move stuff around and establish a nice edge flow, it's not so great for detailing since a lot of it get's brushed out upon dynameshing. You can crank up the res but then it get's performance heavy quickly, you loose all the groups which makes working a lot harder. What you can try is:
1. Establish shape and volume with dynamesh (keep it at 64 or s,th not too much)
2. ZRemesher
3. Subdivide the mesh through the Divide tab (give you the option to rearrange the mesh on lower divisions and have it translate into higher ones).

For the mouth, i have seen people applying a different group to the lower jaw, rotate it around where the jaw should open and move the inside of the mouth in.

vavavoom

Thanks ANCHANG-STYLE,

I had attempted Zremesher, but that smoothed out the face too much, even at super high res.

I've read somewhere about duplicating the mesh and 'projecting'.. but it seems super complicated for a noob like me from the tutorials i have found

i think your suggestion of doing the cavity later might be the best opition.

I'd like to keep pushing on with the Dynamesh coz it really does cancel out the fight with polygons, but i wish i could somehow stop it 'melting' the details...
does masking work? i.e. mask out the areas i don't want to re-dynamesh?
i'll give that a shot, worth a try¬¬¬

pigart

You zremesh your sculpt when you have the correct shape and most of the features in. After that you can start subdividing your mesh and start detailing it. You aren't really supposed to dynamesh/zremesh after you have started detailing.

Anchang-Style

Dynamesh will not work with masks. You really don't have to bother with geo when you have a decent level of ground work done, choose half res in Zremesher (or experiment with values) and use subdivisions then. As said you can move the low subdivisions around and the go back to the higher ones. Subdivision will give a way smoother look to your surfaces and brushes you use on them.
For example this (not my work, it's done by Ryan kingslien)
Original mesh (merged down from several subtools): (sorry for picture spamming)


This is Dynameshed @128


Zremeshed @Half Res


double subdivide @ 2.3 Million Polys


You see the mesh surface got way cleaner than the dynamesh one also brushes will look a lot cleaner. Yes you have lost a lot of surface detail but thats why Dynamesh should be used to hammer in shape without small details. but This way you are having enough nicely spaced polys to sculpt all the detail you would want.

musashidan

pigart said:

You zremesh your sculpt when you have the correct shape and most of the features in. After that you can start subdividing your mesh and start detailing it. You aren't really supposed to dynamesh/zremesh after you have started detailing.

This isn't quite correct. Dynameshing up to secondary detailing and zremeshing/projecting is a very common workflow. The thing about dyna/Zremeshing is that they both really work in tandem, flexibly, and can be used at any stage really, provided you understand them both fully, and when is a good time to use them (as the OP doesn't )
Here's a sculpt I did recently using this method. Dynamesh topology for about 90% of the sculpt and then Zremeshed when I couldn't get the res for certain areas.


@vavavoom You should read the ZB docs or go to Zclassroom. All is explained there. Trying to figure out Zbrush by randomly pressing the icons will only frustrate you.

vavavoom

thanks guys,
gonna watch/study a few tutorials on zRemesher and reprojection.
i just had a quick look, seems it is a good way to get the detail onto a zremeshed mesh...

i'm hoping this reprojection method will be help

Anchang-Style

I mean it's kind of like 2 different meshes all together. You have the Dynamesh sculpt with a very unclean mesh and ZRemesh which turns it into a more useable mesh. Before ZRemesh


After ZRemesh

musashidan

Anchang-Style said:

I mean it's kind of like 2 different meshes all together. You have the Dynamesh sculpt with a very unclean mesh and ZRemesh which turns it into a more useable mesh. 

Yes, they're very much different topological meshes: one is a dynamically tessellating surface comprised of quads, triangles, and many, many poles; the other is a quaded surface with poles placed at edgeloops junctions to control edgeflow direction.

vavavoom

Awesome, just done a quick test...
Dynamesh:

Zremesh (start at low poly):

up the subDiv levels, then project:

For anyone else who may come stumble across this thread:

1. Duplicate Dynamesh model

2. Zremesh the duplicate (this example was just a quickie for testing NO CURVE GUIDES, hence crappy geometry flow!)
 **IMPORTANT** start at a low res zremesh if you want move subDiv levels to work with!

3. Up your subDiv levels on the zremeshed duplicate to either: match your Dynamesh, OR as high as you need to get the detail you want. (just
experiment which works for you)

4. MAKE SURE only the zremeshed duplicated mesh and the original Dynamesh are visible.

5. With the zremeshed duplicated mesh selected, go SubTool>Project>Project All

6. Done!

not sure if i'm allowed to post the youtube video link here??  so,
youtube search: 'zBrush 4r6 zRemesher and reprojection'
for great visual guide, including explanation of curve guides to control edge flow

i'll post updates when i get the zremesh topology flow done better, gotta sleep now
Thanks for the input guys, and hope this helps any others who have had similar problems¬¬

vavavoom

So, I spent way too long than i dare admit to get to this stage. Stopped/started, kept chipping away little by little when i had time and/or motivation.
Went through various sculpting materials too throughout sculpting before i finally ended up back at zbrush's standard 'basic material'. Is there a defacto material used among professionals when sculpting? i know 'red wax' is horrible!

Here's my thoughts thus far:
- Ears still need a lot more love.
- Top of skull needs a touch more sculpting here and there.
- Needs a good polish/ overall general refinement, make it sharper.
- Hair today, gone tomorrow (gonna have a bash at some hair soon...)
- Teeth, gums, mouth cavity work (there is a cavity now, but it's far from ready)

To anyone who can help, I have a question:
It's DYNAMESH at the moment. IF i'm were planning to retopo it to a game poly model, do i need to bother with ZEREMESHing it into a tidy looking geometry?
or can i just get looking good in dynamesh and leave it be?

***AND, crits much appreciated on anatomy
*****and, is there a way i bump this post to the top of the this thread without copying/pasting into the first post on the thread?








* Last one was just messing around with move tool a little on lips and eyebrows to get more of a feel of the anatomy.

dGreenberg

Hey @vavavoom! I'm loving the style of the face and I think the sculpt is really coming along nicely. If you're planning on bringing it into Maya or Max for retopo there's really no need to use the ZRemesher in zBrush, and you can just stick with Dynamesh for the high poly. Exporting it out might be tough depending on the number of points, so you might need to decimate the mesh in zBrush first. If you don't make the decimation too strong it should keep all the details and crunch away at the extra points. From there you should be good to export it and retopologize in another program as an FBX or OBJ.

Regarding the facial proportions I think that you can lengthen the mouth slightly and increase the size of the eyes. This is only an opinion (I really like the style of your character's face), but the oral commisure of the lips usually lines up with the iris of the eyeball on a person's face. The eye size change is also to help balance the features with the size of the head. I want to mention that I'm not a pro when it comes to anatomy (working on that), so please check with some references or photos of the face to see if you agree with that before I lead you down the wrong path. 


Looking forward to see how it progresses!

vavavoom

Thanks @dGreenberg,
appreciate the proportions suggestion. but, i kinda think she looks like some kind of fish person or alien in the suggestion?
i guess bigger eyes mouth could work.. but i think i would have to go in a new direction with the style, perhaps a more exaggerated anime style? 

spent some time trying to make into something more interesting... maybe make some kind of airship captain..or something like that.

vavavoom

Zremesher wasn't quite cutting it, no matter how i tweaked and added curve guides...
so, had to go old school, imported it into Max and retopo it by hand... took way too long, but...i think (in my humble opinion) the result is better AND i can use it as a base mesh in future. Hardest part was making no triangles.

Next, import to Zbrush, sub D, project from my messy Dynamesh, and...... fingers crossed, i'll have a nice tidy new mesh ready to finish!

vavavoom