Fixing a messy mesh (searched and read)

[Nate_Owens]

A new Z-user, I’ve made a mess that I am stuck with.
This model was made in Z from a very basic mesh created in Hexagon.
I had no problems until I decided to make him an open mouth which I obviously did the wrong way.

I searched and read all of the threads on mesh repair, but I don’t think any apply to my messy mesh.

Thanks for your kind patience and help…

In attempting to make an open mouth for my dude, I pushed the polys in his mouth back and around untill they were apparently hopelessly messed up. (I’m new to Z, so maybe I will learn the right way to do this.)

• Smoothing does not work.
• There is no good mesh to make a displacement map from.
• I can use hide and delete the bad polys, leaving a hole.
• I can construct a patch using the topo tools (z-spheres, etc.) but there seems to be no way to make it (as a subtool) align properly with existing polys along the hole I have made.

Questions:

• What would be the best way to make the mouth cavity to start with?
• Is there a way to fix this messy mesh?
• Is there a way to pull the edges of the hole (if I made one) together, and continue sculpting from there?


• Is there a way to patch a new mesh into the existing one so they are one (not a subtool)?

Again, thanks for some help on my mess.

[feureau]

Try the smooth brush? Or, if you want to try with retopo, just reuse the rest of the mesh and draw new topo over the entanglement. (that would be painful to do, tho)

For mouthing, best bet is to edge loop it first. The topology looks like hell over there. aNTROPUs got a tut somewhere about good face topo.

Zbrush woks best with meshes with no hole, but if you got holes, best bet is to use the tweak brush to pull the edge together, and maybe use clay and flatten to clear up the mess, but that’d be bad practice only to be used as desperate measure under emergency condition when you see godzilla outside your window and you need to finish your artwork in less than a minute or he’ll nuke you out.

To patch a mesh into existing mesh, check out the retopo lab in this forum. Someone managed to sew a rhino to a male torso.

[Nate_Owens]

Thanks, feureau… I will check out the link

I suppose the best lesson here is to begin with a good mesh, that said, I was looking for a way to repair or replace sections that may for one reason or another get goofed up… the link sounds like the one I need to see.

I tried smoothing (as mentioned) - no soap.
I also did a retopo but couldn’t get it to fit well around the seams/edges to the old messy mesh.

Here’s the mesh I started with. Not too detailed and not many loopys, but since I am not animating I thought it would suffice. (I am an illustrator for publications, books, gift products and such).

[dsoellbuster]

Hi Nate,

you just don´t have enough Polygons to move the mouth to the inside.

What you can do is creating an edgeloop and move that.

Another solution would be Retopo.

But the best solution is really to create the basemesh the way you need it to be. At least roughly

[aurick]

If you start out hiding everything except where the mouth polygons are and then use an Offset deformation to move those polys a little back into the (hidden) head, you can now do an Edge Loop to construct new polys and form the start of the mouth cavity. Repeat that offset a few times so that you get a few polygons on the sides of the cavity, which will then make sculpting easier.

Here’s an example starting with a cube, just for simplicity’s sake:

[Nate_Owens]

Good deal…

Thanks and these tips are going in my file for permanent reference - I haven’t explored the deform menu too much… just some basic reshaping… Cool!

This is one I’m working on now with Z.
The base was created in Hexagon - (that base is what you see here).
I guess I started with something too simple in the Z on that other mess.