Zbrush 'Delete Hidden' altering my sculpt.

PinkZebra

Hi guys,

So I'm currently studying a course in 3D design, and am doing some experimenting with Zremesher right now.
In order to do this, I'm cutting the head off my dinosaur model and will progress from there.
However, I'm finding that whenever I 'delete hidden', it's altering my mesh quite drastically, and all the detail is gone.

I have searched for some answers online such as masking the head before deleting the hidden parts, which gives me a different result, but it's incredibly messy and not what I had initially.
I have baked the layers down and I have gone down to subdivision level 1. Is there anything I'm missing here?

Will include a couple of images of the errors I'm getting.
I'm also a newbie to Zbrush, so if possible, so I will appreciate a detailed explanation if possible  

Cheers!


'Delete hidden' and returned to the highest subdivision level.


The same process, but with the head masked out.

Sunray

No idea try checking mesh and fixing mesh if that doesn't work feel free to upload the tool so I can have a look at it.

kanga

Deleting hidden generally works well. As long as you freeze the mesh, then hide the parts you want to delete then hit delete hidden, then hit the freeze mesh button to unfreeze. You do this if you want to delete parts but hold the subDs. The only thing you threw into the mix was collapsing layers fist. Maybe something went hinky with that part of your process.

musashidan

@kanga you don't have to freeze the mesh to delete hidden. You just need to be on subdiv lvl 1.

Agreed on the layers. The whole layers system is badly in need of an overhaul. It is bugridden and clunky.

kanga

@musashidan thanks, it was a badly worded answer upon reread!

PinkZebra

Thanks guys! I was able to resolve my issue with your assistance

musashidan said:

@kanga you don't have to freeze the mesh to delete hidden. You just need to be on subdiv lvl 1.

Agreed on the layers. The whole layers system is badly in need of an overhaul. It is bugridden and clunky.

I agree. I can not work with layers at all currently, which is horrible as I am a big fan of a non destructive work flow. 
Whenever I create  a new layer and try to revert back to a previous one, my entire model turns a dark colour and I am unable to do anything to fix it. Really frustrating!

While I have you here though, I might ask another question for an issue I've bumped into
So. Just out of the blue, the symmetry on my model has changed. The thickness of a standard brush for example is probably about 10% thicker on the left as opposed to the right.
Any idea how this happened, and what would be the best way to go about fixing it?

thomasp

delete hidden always softens detail for me. it doesn't screw up the model, mind but when i compare before and after, some definition is lost every time. i try to use it only in early stages, it can really ruin a detail layer.
it can be overcome somewhat by keeping the original mesh as a copy and projecting across but that can introduce messy spots or detail shifting across the surface. all in all, annoying.

the layers are a bit of a mess, notably there's a bug that introduces artifacts when you toggle recording mode often enough. grain and what looks like banding artifacts start to make an appearance, the more the layer differs from the underlying sculpt, the more obvious these get.
the dark color stuff is porbably some polypaint data that gets toggled every time you activate the layer, another annoyance.

as for the symmetry change - one thing you can do is to export the base level out of zbrush into your modelling app, symmetrize one half to the other there (by snapping the existing geometry only) and reimport into zbrush. that works as long as you don't change vertex order, else zbrush will reproject - not pretty.