Zbrush - Merging multiple sub tools

Hanpan

I have been working on a flooring tile sculpt but using several cube meshes. My sub tool palette looks like so:



Now that I have finished sculpting, I want to combine all these sub tools into one mesh so I can sculpt cracks etc across multiple slabs. The problem is, since each slab has nine sub divisions, using the "Merge All" function takes forever (about 30 minutes?) and then fails for some reason.

Is there anyway to combine all these slabs together? Perhaps some way to import the mesh into Maya so I can do a mesh combine?

Any help would be appreciated

Norron

Deleting the subdivision levels and then merge visible on all the tiles should work.

Hanpan

Norron wrote: »

Deleting the subdivision levels and then merge visible on all the tiles should work.

That would remove the higher sub divisions though, meaning I'd need to re-sculpt.

artquest

Hanpan wrote: »

That would remove the higher sub divisions though, meaning I'd need to re-sculpt.

I think he means to delete the lower subdivision levels. Similiar to when you want to use the mirror option under the deformation tab. You can recreate the lower subdivision levels afterwards. Let us know if it works, best of luck.

Ruz

so yeah delete lower subdivisions, merge all tools then reconstruct subdivisions.

beat me to it artquest -

Hanpan

Ahhh, deleting the lower sub divisions did the trick. Thanks a lot.

Ace-Angel

If they're all quads, bring all the of cubes to the same SD level and delete the lower SD's, and merge all. Once done, do 'rebuild SD levels' and it should work.

Alternatively, make a copy of said project, do the above technique with the lowest levels, instead on a copy of said project. SD them to level 9 in your case, and reproject back the detail of the sculpted mesh's (please note your sculpted meshs need to be visible, and reproject needs to be tinkered with the settings to get something good).

Alternatively-alternatively, if your tiles are neatly and tightly packed together, you could do a quick retoplogy and use the above mentioned method to project said detail, and have a nice clean plane mesh which is ready for both baking and general sculpting, but the downside is, you lose overal poly amount per slab, so your small detail might wash out, and look pixelated if you use ZB's baking method. In this case, I would suggest use an external software for baking.

Those are the top of my head right now that should work, tell me how it goes.

(Ninja'd, bleh!)

Hanpan

It seems to be working out ok. The file size has jumped from 72mb to 500mb+ after merging though, any reason why this would happen?

Ruz

did you save it as a file or as a tool, because if you save as a project, the file sizes are massive:/