Hey there
I tried Dynamesh, hoping that I would get a nice face at the bottom to close this mesh, but unfortunately the mesh is too thin. Even when I thicken it using the extract tool, it doesn’t close the hole to form a nice base mesh in the way I would like it to. Any ideas on filling this mesh hole?
The object is a scanned curry. What need is a nice base. I don’t want a hollow mesh. Any ideas on how I could create this? Thanks
Hey ZBER2
Thanks. I’ve tried this but Zbrush seems to freeze. I get the blue loading circle, and I wait 5 mins, and nothing changes.
Maybe it’s my PC, I’m not sure.
But I’ve noticed that when I thicken the mesh, Dynamesh and Close Holes work almost instantly, but they don’t close the holes.
Not sure what’s going on.
I’m on ZBrush 2022.0.8 so I can’t be sure what you can check. You can try MeshIntegrity in “Tool > Geometry” to see if your mesh is suitable for ZBrush. Other than that, I would suggest you wait for @Spyndel to help you with this.
Thanks. I tested the Mesh Integrity and it seemed to be fine.
I don’t suppose you would be able to have a quick look at my file and see if Dynamesh / close holes works for you?
I would really be very grateful!!
When I click on your link to download the file, file.io say’s “the transfer you requested has been deleted”.
iirc you asked about this on the ZBrush subreddit. Now that you’ve attached the file I can give you a solution that works without second guessing.
Mask everything except the borders (Masking:Mask by Feature:Border & Invert Mask). This will leave a line of vertices along the edges of all open holes. (There are several in the body of the scan, not just the base)
Gizmo : Goto Unmasked Mesh Center and Drag the unmasked vertices down as far as you like (say 1-2 times the height of the scan) to make a “wall” of polygons around all open edges. (At this stage you can clearly see there are several open holes in the body of the scan which is giving close holes functionality a hard time). However the problem can be mitigated with Live Boolean as follows.
Append a cylinder and resize and position it so it completely covers the wall of polygons, so that the curry scan is kind of sitting on a big plate. Make sure the cylinder extends beyond the scan.
Acitvate Live Boolean, set the cylinder to subtractive and Subtool:Make Boolean Mesh.
You will end up with a new subtool UMesh_“name of curry scan subtool”. Now you can do what you want with it. For example, activate Dynamesh, click on the resolution slider and drag onto the body of the scan, and Dynamesh. Clean up areas where the scan was off and ZRemesh or whatever according to the intended purpose.
All these steps work as I downloaded the model and ran it on ZBrush 2022.0.8 on a 4 year old PC in about 5 minutes. Send me a link if you want the resultant file but frankly, it’s better if you do it, as the steps are easy.
Oops, sorry about that … I downloaded the file because I had previously answered the same question a few days ago on the ZBrush subreddit and was curious to see the actual file. I see now that the file is automatically deleted after download so you could not download it. Anyway hopefully I’ve given the OP a working solution. Cheers.
No worries! 
Hey Tobor8man. Thanks for explaining everything in depth. Your solution closed the hole, and now Dynamesh works instantly as it should. So thanks so much for that!!
The only issue now is that I have this extension of the scan that I would like to eliminate. This is because I want to retain the edge of the scan, and the fact that the extension is not textured. (See photo). How would I bring the extension upwards while preserving the uneven edge of the original scan?
The scan is an odd shape so there is no simple geometric shape that will close the bottom. Think of a potato chip (crisp) and imagine what surface could close that shape without somehow extending the edges first. Also, even the original scan has extended vertical “walls” much like those created by the method I described, so it’s not clear whether they are to be included or not as part of the required edge.
Let’s assume you don’t want any of the vertical (“wall”) edges, even those from the original scan. So perform the steps outlined previously up to and including the Gizmo dragging of edges to make walls. Then it’s an easy process to box select the lower points/polys of the wall and delete them. Only the detailed curry scan polys remain. Polygroup this single sided surface. Then give it thickness by activating Dynamic Subdivision, set subdiv to 0, thickness to 0.001 and offset to -100 (thicken inwards). This will make a thin, solid body without any noticeable projection of polygons through the upper surface, except a few places near the edge. Click Apply to turn it into real geometry. Then Dynamesh, if required, to a high resolution (1500+). At this stage you have a solid with separate polygroups for the upper and lower surfaces and the thin side wall.
If you want a somewhat flat base then mask all but the inside surface and Gizmo move/scale to smash it into a planar surface as desired. That will introduce “walls” somewhere but that’s unavoidable if you want a flat base. You could then Dynamesh or Decimate this model.
Anyway, once you have a solid with polygroups for the upper and lower surfaces then you can do whatever you want (Decimate, Dynmesh, ZRemesh etc).
hth
Hey there
Thanks again for the detailed reply. I wanted to keep the vertical edges from the original scan. And to be honest I found that Blender was able to achieve what I wanted.
I selected a portion of the mesh and used the fill tool (F) to create faces. I did this about 6-7 times until I the base was filled. And then triangulated the faces (Face → Triangulate Faces). There were some strange faces created (hence why I didn’t fill the base all at once), but they’re unnoticeable, and if you take your time, you could probably eliminate all of them.
Here’s how it looks:
It’s not flat obviously, but it will be on a plate, so it will do. Most importantly, I have retained the original edges, so if you look at the curry from above, it’s shape is very realistic.
Now I can Dynamesh and Zremesh.
