ZBrushCentral

Any tips on projecting detail, no method works for me?

I have this character im making, and have decided to edit the topology in another application. The areas iv changed are the mouth, it now has inner mouth, so the lips are no longer bound together. Second edit was more edge loops around eyes, and making inner eye socket. All the edit was done with no problem.

Now I wish to project the details back on this edited mesh. I try using the new mesh as new topology but the project produces a complete mess on the face, large polygons pulled through the eyes, nose and the mouth.

Second method was to ProjectAll sub tools, this produced even more of a mess, legs bound together even athought the fingers and legs are open quite wide. Polys spiked in all directions.

3rd method was to use Zproject brush. I inflated the mesh I wanted to shrink onto the detail mesh and guess what, a complete mesh. Work on one side it makes poly spikes on the other, some parts shrink ok while others just distort and deform behond repair.

Now im sure these tools work but in this case non of they are playing nicly with my mesh. So any tips on how to avoid these problems would be great.

Thanks.

I am not familiar with 3rd method, but first two may be caused by vertex position offset. Which 3d apps are you using? What was alike im/export setting? Can we see some screen shots?

I dont think the vertex order has anythink to do with the projection. The only difference between meshes is a extra loop and inner eye sockets and mouth. The two models fit together perfect.

Project All from sub tool.

Zproject brush, teh target is larger than the scorce.

Project from the Rigging/ Topology method.

Maybe you’re right, but the reason that I mentioned “Vertex Order” theory was behind of Zbrush Wiki… (scroll down to section ‘Final UV adjustment and Vertex Order’)
http://www.zbrush.info/docs/index.php/ZBrush_To_Maya_Displacement_Guide#UV_Regions_and_Polygroups
It is based on Maya, but it would be same story for other 3d apps.

Have you tried ‘Store Morph Target’ ? Before you apply ‘projection,’ in ‘preview’ mode (with appropriate level of density) of the new mesh (with good UV), ‘Store MT.’ Then turn off ‘preview,’ and apply ‘projection.’ For the problem areas (pinch and poke), use ‘morph brush’ to clear them as you need.
(I learned this from Nickz tutorials, by the way…)

Thanks for your help rybeck.

The morph brush cant work from a topology produced projection, as a new mesh gets created, hence it has no morph targets stored. Using morph brush after using either the ProjectAll or ZProject brush produces such a bad mess that even the morph brush cant fix it.

Id have to go as far as saying it mite be quicker to just sculpt my model from scratch, as these tools simply dont work as they should, or shown to work.

Unless im missing somthing about the usage of these tool, it would seem they are great idears that need alot of work. Im hitting alot of dead ends in Zbrush 3, and in all cases im having to go and do things the way I normaly would have done when I had Zbrush 2. The bigest difference is that Zbrush 2 smart resym works, this has caused major problems in v3. Il leave this thread another 4 hours and if there are no results il have to just start again, the old way, base mesh, topology, uvs in another applications, Zbrush sculpt and detail, thats if the symetry dont get lost.

Iv read the wiki on these functions and searched about the internet, I cant do much more.

hi man. I was having the exact problem as you… I did an inner mouth and all messed up.

probably is too late to tell you it, but you should take a look at this thread

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?p=436999&posted=1#post436999

specially about what spaceboy said

best of lucks!

Thanks for pointing me to this thread, I tryed it but its not switching the morph.

I projected all, to create the bad mesh the stored morph target. As it said in thread twitch back the paint in the details.

For some reason I cant switch back?

oh, thats weird. have you tried with another mesh?

what I also did was taking the Zintensity in the morph brush all the way up, maybe could be that.

First off there is no easy one click solution to doing this, all methods require some cleanup and or certain tweaks as well.
Personally i never use project during the retop process, nor do i like zproject.
Projectall is very powerfull if you know its limits, its important to have the two mesh’s as similar as possible, in areas where this is not possible(the inner mouth) what you need to do is hide that area on one or both models, experimentation is key to all projection processs cause you will understand why they do what they do. projection around fingers always requires cleanup, this where that morphtargeting comes in handy, pun intended.
This is important: when using projectall do it in steps, from you lowest levels of both models slowly going up and examining where problems may occur.
I think you may not be able to switch your morph target because you either hid part of your mesh or changed it somehow or are on a different subdivision level than the one you created the morph on.
I think one thing people run into is they decide too late to do retopology and projecting, when they get too much detail etc. it will work at at these higher levels but is of course more difficult.
One thing to note, eventually in your higher divisions when you projectall you’ll notice that the old mesh’s polys are effecting the target mesh, what i mean is sometimes if your new mesh is higher in polys than the old one the old mesh will actually project a faceted surface onto your smooth model, at this point you should divide the old model one more time to obtain smoothness in your new model.
I use projectall almost all the time on my models now, i find it liberating to not have to worry about topology early on. As with everything in zbrush it just takes some getting used to.
EDIT: actually i do use project in topology but only on very low res meshes, the point being that it will shape the new mesh enough to the old one so its easier to use with projectall.
One more important thing it to make sure all your normals are facing in the same directions.
Also i think your problems with the zproject brush are common, its very particular, and you need to play with it between zadd and zsub, also do not have your draw cursor go off the edges of the model. i’ve yet to get it to work correctly with symmetry tuned on.

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. :confused:

i have to disagree on some parts. for me, it doesnt restrict the creativity, of course its not all that creative when you have to do retop and project but at that point you’ve done all the creative stuff, now its time for the tedious work, it had to happen at some point in the workflow, why not at the end.

the topology size issue depends on how big your model was, try unify before going into topology, do you hide parts of the mesh? i have run into this problem but as i said resizing your model usually fixes this.

i don’t know what to say about your problems drawing in the eyes,mouth etc with topology, i usually do not have this problem. Also edgelooping things like fingers is easier than retopologizing(due to that finger4sidedpoly issue).

something seems to be happening on your export/reimport after you do your uv’s, i know there are settings which effect this and has been covered in other threads.

yes the project brush takes a long time, thats why i don’t use it.

heres a tip about the eyes and mouth, instead of trying to actually do the retopolgy inside these sockets, just draw topology closign off the mouth/eyes and then draw a bunch of loops in there, after topology, move them into place and project your mesh that way.

overall i don’t know what else to tell you except try to be patient, and do lots of experiments.

I have to disagree on some parts. for me, it doesnt restrict the creativity, of course its not all that creative when you have to do retop and project but at that point you’ve done all the creative stuff, now its time for the tedious work, it had to happen at some point in the workflow, why not at the end.

My point was that Zbrush 3s idear was you could do the creative stuff first and worry about the Uv and toopology later. Im now having to do things the other way around which is what I was doing when I used ZB2. Im just a bit dissopointed that Im having to use my external application as much as Im having to, and before I even start sculpting in fear I could loose my work due to topology and projection issues.

the topology size issue depends on how big your model was, try unify before going into topology, do you hide parts of the mesh? i have run into this problem but as i said resizing your model usually fixes this.

Yes, as you know that when hiding a mesh part ,you can get Zbrush to scale that new visable sellection to the full screen. While this works during sculpting it dont during the retoplogy process. Iv read that you can trick Zb by previewing the mesh,s ellecting a area to scale it to full size, and then come out of preview to have that sellection remain close, this unfotunatly is not working for me. I have tryed unifi, but this has no effect. This issue is becasue im working on full characters. Because Zbrush 3 cant hide and scale and sellected part during the re-topology process, somthink like a finger remains very small on the screen. I cant use the Zoom as this visualy makes it near imposible to see due to pixel distortion.

i don’t know what to say about your problems drawing in the eyes,mouth etc with topology, i usually do not have this problem. Also edgelooping things like fingers is easier than retopologizing(due to that finger4sidedpoly issue).

I make my fingers and toes have 5 or more sides on my base mesh itself. If I try to make topology from scratch in Zb my issues are I cant get close enougth to see what im doing.

something seems to be happening on your export/reimport after you do your uv’s, i know there are settings which effect this and has been covered in other threads.

Beleave me, Iv spend hours of research and the issues are not fixable asof yet. This is not ZB issue, its a Modo point order issuse. It just so happens that also Hexagon, my other app im using has point order issues as well. This greatly adds to the pain. Of course I dont find this out till Iv spent days on a sculpt to find I cant have a new UV mesh brought in.

yes the project brush takes a long time, thats why i don’t use it.

heres a tip about the eyes and mouth, instead of trying to actually do the retopolgy inside these sockets, just draw topology closign off the mouth/eyes and then draw a bunch of loops in there, after topology, move them into place and project your mesh that way.

Good idear, thanks Il try that.

overall i don’t know what else to tell you except try to be patient, and do lots of experiments.

Patient has to be my middle name by now. lol. Iv lost count on how many months iv spent getting literaly nothing done, or getting so far and have a huge hit that renders my work useless. Im still at it, and always will, I just have adpated to the above problems at the cost of going back to most of my workflow when using ZB2. While this is still fine, iv had to spend a long time to get back to this stage, thats alot of time waisted.


Thanks again for your help.:+1:

i’m sorry to hear you had to return to the old z2 workflow and that you fear losing your models, i save incrementally so this doesnt bother me much. Also i was trying to say that the new workflow works for me, so obviously we are doign something different than one another, who knows what.
you probably have but did you attempt to Unify or make your model bigger using the size deformation? before going into topology?
that sucks about the point order issue, hopefully if you talk to them they can get that fixed.

When I say lose my models, I mean get so far and find that a stage that I thought Zbrush 3 could deal with, cant. This would be getting close enougth to the model for topology, 4 sides to the fingers, editing topology that I made in zbrush to find It wont project the details back correct, due to 4 sides on the fingers and toes. Adding inner mouth in another app thinking that simply hidng this new geometry will allow the projection of detail back, it didnt. Trying the project brush took too long and resulted in me starting from scratch. Each time was mostly new projects. The fear now is, is there a stage that I havent got to yet, where Zbrush has issue with.

I havent thought of literaly scaling with the deformation tools, this sounds like it could well solve this issue, this alone will help a great deal.

It sounds like I could be doing somthink wrong during my process as your not having all my issues. Just to get it more clear are you following this flow?

Is this the way you work?

  1. Make basic mesh in or out zbrush with little edge flow.
  2. Sculpt to a fairly hi level before thinking about topology.
  3. Make all your topology 100% in Zbrush using little or non from your base.
  4. Export your low base to make your new Uvs and succesfull import it back?

This is the way Im having to work:

  1. Make base in external app with finnal edge flow for fingers, toes, inner mouth and eyes.

  2. Sculpt very basic form and use part base mesh topology and build some in ZB.

  3. Export base out for Uv maping.

  4. Sculpt, paint in Zb and export for render.

  5. export a few times into ZB2 to correct symmetry, save and check often.

Scaling the mesh got me alot closer, perfect for working on the topology details.

Im not sure if I got a problem with my instalation of Zbrush but I can only work on this re scaled topology for a few seconds before Zbrush crashes. Im not sure but it seems to be If I scale alot? Im trying to get close enougth that I can have a whole single eye on the screen.

Thanks.

======================

Ok back after a few hours and this is what I have so far.

If I size the mesh up I can get nice and close, but! in order to rotate around the area I have to enable Local which jumps the scale down, is there any way out of this?

Thanks.

" Is this the way you work?

  1. Make basic mesh in or out zbrush with little edge flow.
  2. Sculpt to a fairly hi level before thinking about topology.
  3. Make all your topology 100% in Zbrush using little or non from your base.
  4. Export your low base to make your new Uvs and succesfull import it back?"

Yes i do all of this except #4

You say that Local is causing it to get smaller, this may be cause you have too much of the model still showing or have a part far off from the part you’re workign on, for example both hands at the same time, in this case things get tricky cause you want symmetry, if you can’t get small enough in try like i said and just make a big topological shape of the eye socket and move it into the shape later. otherwise you’ll have to work with symmetry off, if you do this i suggest only modelign one half of the model, there is a trick then to getting your new topology mirrored to both sides once you make an adaptive mesh. but i don’t want to confuse you if thats not something you’re doing.
hope that helps

What im doing is say, sizing it up by 300 then bring it into the rigging for new topology or editing topology.

The scale lets me go right in but only on the center of the mesh, regardless on where I got the mesh positioned. So I scale right in close and move the mesh down untill I get to the head. The mouth is filling the whole screen but the rotation piviot point is no good so Local has to be enabled.

At this point even if I hide everythink els, as soon as I enable local and rotate, the model scale steps back and wont alow me to scale in as close again…

Here is a video showing in more detail.

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v63857857Ty5WGSp?c=CGDreams

Thanks.

Nice tip for scaling! I wish I could do that after I already started.
I try to rotate the model while in preview mode , less geometry usually. also I topolize with the render on fast mode. It really helps with my computer.

I am having the same problem with the exploding mesh with preview on. when its off the model looks fine but when its on not only is it a disaster it is has lost symetry. I did adjust the underlying mesh but that shouldnt matter I redid those areas. I think it is because of the way I topolized it. I had large holes all over I should have kept it together. i tried to delete problem area and retop it and it fixes sometimes.

Having had similar problems that my mesh was all distorted when turning “Projection” on, I solved my problem by setting the “ProjectionRange”-value-slider to minus -1.

Minus -0,50 and minus -0,10 also work, so it seems that when the “ProjectionRange”-value-slider = higher than minus -0,10 (e.g. 0 or greater than 0) then the projection fails.

When negative (the ProjectionRange lower than zero) then my mesh was projected completely OK with following attributes:

  • original mesh = 9 million polys (7 subdiv levels)
  • retopoed mesh = 2292 polys
  • adaptive skin “Density”-slider = 7.

i have a meats mier [spelling?] chapter on just this for projecting hi res onto a low res…there are quite a few tools to tweek to get it to work right on problematic models such as closing holes and also the distance it projects to…the latest training vid f rom digital tutors on zsphere modeling covers reopologiing and re projection quite well also…as did the characicature dvd from digital tutors them i bought too.

there’s quite deep coverage on some pro training out there for you to master zbrush and it’s toolset…

www.digitaltutors.com

http://gnomonology.com/