ZBRUSH artifacts when smoothing

Azimuth

Anyone know how to get rid of the un-smoothe (grainy) texture you get in zrbrush when you've smoothed like way too much? ...so far I've avoided the problem by adding another subdivision, but now i'm at sub-d 6 i'm thinking i should address the problem lol

Help much appreciated, thanks!

-Azimuth

Azimuth

/bump

please help!

Ged

I dont understand what you mean? maybe some small pics of the problem?

Firebert

if you are talking about what i think you are talking about, you may be referring to the cavity intensities of matcap materials in ZB3. the cavity is very noticebale on say the the shiny skull material or any material at a low sub-d. is this what you are talking about? you can see each poly and every poly? if it is, then adjust the cavity transition of the material you are using in the material > modifiers palette. or just don't use a matcap material. sure they look fancy and nice, but the old materials work just fine for working on your model.

Azimuth

On the area on the head the polys are smooth and the they stay like this for a good amount of editing.

On the neck you can see the quality of the polys is getting poorer (larger) and harder to work with the more I edit them - mainly from smoothing.

Initially it looks like a problem with the basemesh having topology that does match the high rez (which may be partly to blame), but I'm also getting this on other areas where this isn't the case.

If I've explained that all backwards, in a nutshell, the more I edit/smooth the worse the material/polys seems to get as in the neck area.

-Azimuth

Vitor

Well from what i see on that image you are not getting any error or noise. That looks like some lower poly density areas probably due to a bad basemesh.

Make sure you got some uniform polygon distribution on your basemesh and you won't have that problem.



Anyway, if you export that model to another aplication, say Max, and apply a smoothgroup most of it gets unoticiable.

Azimuth

Thanks for the quick feedback

Firebert

Your issue is just topology man. You have a tighter poly distribution in the head area and a wider poly distribution in the torso. Read up on creating and editing good topology as much as you can and get really good at it. It is so vital to modeling, especially if you ever animate any model, then it is required. So IMO, if it is necessary for good solid deformations when animating so you don't shoot your brains out, might as well model with good topology ALL the time.

Azimuth

Its just a z-sphere base mesh underneath, gotta re-topolozise in zbrush and project the hi-rez to a retopologized base mesh after. The thing is, its not just the areas where the hi-rez doesn't sit on the underlying topology well that I'm getting the issue...

...i can sculpt fine for a while, the polys don't show through badly, it seems the more i work on an area the worse the problem gets

Hopefully it'll go away when i project the hi rez onto the new base mesh

Firebert

sorry for the misunderstanding on the topology! :poly121:
make sure you have the SMT function enabled when you move up in your divisions so it smooths the polys for each time you divide.
if you're pulling polys out, especially with the inflat brush, and depending on your standard brush mod settings, your polys will expand and artifact like you are talking about... especially if you are working off of any of the standard zbrush shapes or zspheres since there is no topology that adheres to your design yet. that or i just really don't know what the heck is going on. have you tried doing a smooth in the deformation palette to see if it helps at the current level? what kind of brush are you using? do you have an alpha enabled or are you just using the brush alone?

also, a method i like to use for retopo in zbrush. just block in your basic forms first and don't worry about the details. don't even get really heavy on blocking the forms in on your zspheres. when you go to retopo in zbrush, don't use projection and makes sure you have a nice flow working for your new topology. that should eliminate these artifacts all together since it won't project the expanded polys as well as maintain your solid base shapes from your concept sculpt. you'll also just get better resolution results if you wait to do nice details after retopo. use xnormal to transfer between high poly and low poly. the results are better than using ZMapper IMO.

MoP

Try using a different material instead of redwax. Try matcap gray.

Firebert

MoP wrote: »

Try using a different material instead of redwax. Try matcap gray.

Like I said from my first post, some matcaps capture that cavity and poly distribution more than others.

JohnnyRaptor

the reason for this has been stated before, and the same problem is there in all 3d packages, if you disable face smoothing. You can view your mesh with face smoothing on in ZB by setting DSmooth in Tools\Display Properties to 1, and then turn off Quick from the Transform menue, but as said before, this wont affect your actual mesh and is only a display property..but it does give you a nice smooth surface:)

Azimuth

MoP: Different materials helped a bit thanks!

Firebert: I'm working a little backwards on this one as I want the anatomy to direct the flow of the base mesh and with my knowledge of anatomy I wasn't confident enough to build it the other way around. I'll try your work flow for my next character though, thanks dude!

-Azimuth

:EDIT:

nice one ty Jon!