New to Zbrush...how many times do you typically subdivide your mesh?

Irraka

Hey guys I've been curious about this issue for a while now. I'm new to zbrush and while I started to do some alien busts I find myself sub dividing a few times because when you start to do fine details the mesh is super bad. I was just curious how many times one would subdivide their mesh. For example look at this image. How many times do you think this mesh was or should be divided? https://www.pinterest.com/pin/540924605221392092/


Also any general tips/advice would be awesome. Thanks!!!

Pain

It depends on your need, even when you work with your mesh, you can also feel it. The higher you subdivision, the less you could control your mesh.
So only subdivi when you feel like you need it, for the first stage liking blocking the mesh, try to get as low as you can so it will be easy for you to control your mesh, if you work with details, then just subdivision as much as you feel it needed.
For example above, I think it needs 5 times because of the eyes and lip. 

Irraka

Pain said:

It depends on your need, even when you work with your mesh, you can also feel it. The higher you subdivision, the less you could control your mesh.
So only subdivi when you feel like you need it, for the first stage liking blocking the mesh, try to get as low as you can so it will be easy for you to control your mesh, if you work with details, then just subdivision as much as you feel it needed.
For example above, I think it needs 5 times because of the eyes and lip. 

So you think to do good detail with the eyes and lips you need to subdivide about 5 times?

Pain

Yeah maybe, because I as said above, if I subdivide 4 times but the details is still not as good as I wanted, then I will subdivide to 5 or 6 until I feel satisfied.

oglu

my base is that high... i dont need to subdivide for a comic char... all geo is needed for the blendshapes...
25 to 40k quads for a head...

the interesting part starts at 47minutes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAPT5Cvw60M

Nam.Nguyen

It depends on the level of details you want, and the base mesh that you start with.

Ex: you're sculpting some fine details for a realistic model and you see that the mesh resolution doesn't hold up then subdivide more.
Sometimes you start with a cube and divide it 8 times, the other times you start with a mid-res human base mesh then you only divide it 2-3 times . . .

It doesn't matter at all how many time you subdivide.  You're new to Zbrush, just focus on sculpting, this is the last thing that you should worry about.

thomasp

i tend to start with a fairly detailed base model done outside zbrush and usually end up on level 6 or 7 which is enough to incorporate pore detail on a realistic model.

i agree though that it's not a good thing for a beginner to subdivide that high. focus on shapes first and then work your way up.

it's easy to end up with an unworkable mess or to have all your memory eaten by zbrush, triggering the computer to swap.