Hi currently Im working with high poly model and my pc starts to scream with pain. Is there any way to compress the model only in viewport and uncomperss when its ready for render. Cheers
Hello @Astroteles_Evetrials
Fine detail sculpting is best done on a mesh with a low-ish poly base and multiple levels of subdivision. Zbrush has optimizations for meshes in this form, like displaying a lower subdivision level when navigating in order to keep performance high. If rendering in an external program you will need a mesh in this form to create the normal or displacement maps required to capture that fine surface detail.
When sculpting, it gives you the freedom to work only on the highest level of subdivision needed for the level of detail you are sculpting at the time, as opposed to a high poly mesh at a single level of subdivision whose points are always active. The more points active at once, the greater the performance burden.
If rendering in ZBrush, simply sculpt at the highest level of SubD required, then switch to the highest level for render.
Since subdivision levels complicate working with other tools in Zbrush that change topology, like Dynamesh, Sculptris Pro, or IM brushes, fine detail sculpting should be thought of as a distinct later phase separate from mesh creation when your form is still being rapidly changed. While it’s best to save this sort of work for when your mesh 's form and topology are mostly stable, you can always change it again and use detail projection to project detail from your existing model onto a new mesh.
General ZBrush mesh discipline:
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Split any parts of the mesh that can logically be split into separate subtools. The max poly limit and performance burden is per subtool (each subtool can go up to the limit). Keep sections of mesh that need to be able to be sculpted on at the same time (like a body) grouped in the same subtool.
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Only Subdivide or add polygons as necessary. When creating a base topology for fine detail sculpting and painting, try to deliver more polygons to areas that need to support greater detail, and away from areas that don’t. This pays off at higher levels of subdivision, and may save you from having to subdivide an additional time.
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You can hide portions of the same subtool using the mesh visibility functions to get them out of the way or improve performance. This does disable some of the performance optimizations mentioned above, so it may actually decrease performance on a particularly dense mesh.
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Thank You for extensive reply. I need more dense topology in places like hands and toes more than rest of the body. So I will try to separate them for individual subtools in order to increase SubD on them instead of the hole body.
Unfortunately that’s not a great idea because you will want to sculpt on the hands at the same time as the rest of the body to avoid seams. Good candidates for subtools are things like garments or armor pieces, or eyes and teeth that are acceptable to sculpt on separately–things that can be logically separated. Ideally, you’d like to be able to sculpt on hands at the same time as the rest of the body, to allow unbroken, seamless sculpting. This means the hands need to remain as part of the body subtool, unless you really want to complicate your working process.
If you want to deliver more polygons to those areas, this is something you would do while you’re establishing a permanent, export quality topology that you don’t expect to have to change again. In this case, you can either manually draw in additional polygons in those places, and away from areas like the bottoms of feet, or other places that won’t receive a lot of scrutiny. ZRemesher has tools that allow you to use polypaint to paint zones of higher or lower polygons density.
ZBrush can actually sculpt pretty well on ultra dense meshes even on modest hardware. In fact it can sculpt easily on meshes that may be far too dense for other CPU intensive processes in the program to handle very well.
Eventually, however, a mesh will become too dense to subdivde again, either from hard polygon limit or system limitations. In those cases, you may need to make use of HD Geometry.
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“Unfortunately that’s not a great idea because you will want to sculpt on the hands at the same time as the rest of the body to avoid seams” - thats what I just noticed and it looks awful. Zremesh with polypaint seems like a good idea to point places with more dense topology of the same subtool. Thanks for Your assistance!