Preserving edges (Zbrush)

Chaosv49

Hello all. I need to know how people acheive that hard mechanical look on there edges when smoothed out for a personal project I'm working on. I know this is a noob question but I just haven't really ever gotten into it alot.

I already know there is one method : Chamfering edges. I was watching this tutorial and the guy mentions a zbrush plugin and polygroups. I tested a chamfered box but it still gave me a round-ish surface. It was obviously better than the non chamfered cube but it still didn't react the way the guys plugin affected his box when subdivided. He kept talking about "Creasing" I think he had a plugin which made a button which said "import creased" it was hard to see on youtube.

I know this method is used for guns and mechanical things which is what my project is based upon.

The effect I'm sort of talking about is something like this : http://209.132.96.165/zbc/attachment.php?attachmentid=83225 and also http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/attachment.php?attachmentid=53420 Which I think is very cool. I've always wanted to make highpoly mechanical stuff. Any help?

MoP

Creasing is what you want if you want to subdivide stuff while retaining the hard edges, and also have soft edges smoothed out properly. It's not a plugin, it's just regular ZBrush, CTRL-hover over the "Crease" and "Uncrease" buttons in the Geometry rollout of the Tool panel to see how to use it.

You can also turn off the "SMT" button in the Geometry rollout before subdividing, this way it won't smooth the result, it'll just subdivide it, meaning you'll retain the original shape of your mesh. This might be the fastest way to get what you want, since creasing can be a bit fiddly.

Chaosv49

I downloaded a smoothing group plugin that gets me the right effect from Zbrush Central but it doesnt work the first time when I sub d the model. It works the second time for some reason but the wire frame is looking pretty weird. The triangle is like almost black you know? because of the wire framed view and all the sub d's.

Chaosv49

I just used the crease method. Is this the correct way? it works pretty well. I shift clicked and created the dotted lines but is it okay if the wire frame gets "messy" unwire framed it looks fine. I hope you know what I mean by "messy". I always like to make sure that a certain method is the correct one. Thank you.

Hehe - the plugin does the same thing. There both fast. I used it on a bed model and it didn't collapse! great