Thanks for your time to answer this thread.
Whats caught me out is the perception of how I could,should beable to work with Zb v3s new tools.
Be free and create, get your idears down fast, and work with the flow of the artest in mind was my dream, and im sure many others.
The first problem I had was its said by quite a few pros out there, that you dont need to worry about good topology while sculpting, and that it can be a limitation in forcing your sculpt. I found this to make the sculpt almost imposible for eyes and mouth.
I now use the re-topology tool at a early level of form sculpting. Unfortunatly this topology tool wont alow me to get close enougth to add good edge loops for eyes and mouth fingers and toes. I couldnt add any additional geometry like inner mouth or inner eye sockets, whats more if I added these outside Zbrush I would lose all my sculpting above that base level, as the projection tools just dont work correctly.
I then had to think of Zbrush made topology as a base topology for finnishing it off in nother application, I cant build topology to be complete.
I decided to now build the complete head, hands, Feet, and inner mouth and eye sockets, right from the beginning creation of the base mesh in another application.
Of course this means that the creative flow has already been broken. Iv now got to the point that the time iv waisted trying to project days of sculpting, I mite as well just sculpted on a perfect mesh right from the beginning. The problem is when want to add additional geometry after days of sculpting.
The project brush just takes so long to project any detail back without bad distortion that again this creative flow is broken. Me wanting to add inner mouth and eye sockets on the base of a Level 6 sculpt is not going to happen.
Iv tryed playing with slowly adding Project-all in SubD stages, and the mesh folds in, breaks up. My problem with doing your method wasnt your method itself, but Zbrush wasnt even projecting any detail in the first place. When I used the morph brush to sculpt the details on, the morph brush was working, it just didnt have any detail to project back on. The switch wasnt working because I didnt store the morph before I used Project-all. When I store the morph before Project-all and then store it again after Project-all, I can then switch, allowing me to paint project the mess onto my mesh, as in this case that is all there was to put back on.
A few weeks ago I just broke out in laughter saying to myself, “what the hell am I doing,” Just get that base mesh made with good hands, fingers,feet, basic edge loops for eyes, mouth and edd that inner mouth and inner eye sockets. Do some form sculpting in Zbrush to level 2 only, clone the mesh and delete all geometry with poor topoology, keeping the good.
Use this Clone as my topology base, and build the new toopolgy from this in Zb. Project level 2 detail then export the entire mesh to another application, forget about Zbrush freedom, its not freedom, its a nightmare.
I cant even do the Uvs later, as the dam point order changes. The mesh I bring back into Zb, breaks the target mesh into peices. I even tryed exported a high res mesh , bring in my new low res with Uvs, and sub deviding to the level of my Hires mesh in hope that I could import this for my details at the highest level, this also folded the mesh.
Conclusion is build your mesh 90% in another application, only use Zbrush retopology for basic topology, and to aid in speeding up the process. Add your Uvs having the mesh 100% complete before even thinking of spending days, weeks on a sculpt. Keep Zbrush 2 on your system to correct the center line symmetry loss during your sculpt in ZB3, save often and il be fine. 