Untill ZB gets real edge geometry selection, creasing edges as specifically and precisely as you would be able to in a traditional modeller will always be a bit problematic. Here are some tips I can give you from my own work, when importing from a general purpose traditional modeller.
If there are large portions of your mesh that need to be creased and less organic, isolate those portions by hiding everything but, and shift click “crease edges”. I say shift click, because that applies the creasing to everything visible, and honestly, I havent had any luck in getting zb to crease things on an isolated edge by edge basis. I think for that, you really need to be modelling in ZB from scratch, and I seldom do that except for organics. You can preview which sections are creased with the "frame " button depressed, by which edges have the serrated outlines. Divide a couple sub d levels with the creases on, then remove them by shift clicking “uncrease” which removes all creases visible. That should get you up to high subd levels with portions of your mesh being much more geometrical looking, yet still not having impossibly sharp edges.
In the case of absolutely inorganic hard edged objects, thats easy. Simply un-press the “SMT” button next to the divide button in the geomtry section of the tool menu before dividing. This will subd the mesh as if all the poly edges were 1000% creased.
The problem with this though, is the rather broad application of the creasing, which is not always desirable…sometimes you want to be much more specific, in meshes with mixed characteristics,which can be tough coming in from an outside modeler. ZB doesnt recognize designated creasing from outside packages at the present time. But there are some things you can do to the geometry to make it subdivide more accurately in zb.
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Reinforce the geometry around the sections youd like to remain harder. The more subdivided a mesh already is when coming into z, the less the form will alter from smoothing. This can result in some high poly counts though.
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A fine bevel along an edge in an outside modeller, is frequently recognized as a inherent virtual crease in most sybd smoothing algorythms. Put a narrow bevel along the edges you with to remain harder when imported and subd’d in zb. This will usually result in a deligtfully hard line, without being impossibly sharp, at higher subd levels.
here are a couple of my tricks in Z, that long time z users have probably known about for a while:
- Import the precise mesh into zb. Save it as a morph target. SubD it up4 or 5 levels to get the geomtrty to work with that you want for the hi frequency details. Then drop back down to subd lev 1. Youll see that the smoothing has altered the basic form of the intial mesh somewhat profoundly. In the morph target section of the tool menu, hit “switch” to restore the initial mesh, then “delete” the altered morph target, and store the initial mesh again. Go back up to the highest subd level, and youll see that reinserting the initial mesh has tightened up the subd’d geomtry somewhat. Go back down to subd 1, and youll see that the initial mesh ahs again been altered by the smoothing, but not as profoundly this time.
Repeat the process again, usually 3 or 4 times is enough to get a pretty accurate hi subd level that is reflective of the intiial mesh. This doesnt always work, as sometimes, it can generate especially sharp edges that need to be manually “sanded down” again.
You can probably acheive the same sort of effect just using the morph slider in the morph target menu, but this is the way I do it.
- And finally, you can spot “un-smooth” portions of your mesh by masking all
but the portion you want to tighten up( hiding and masking mesh portions is much easier if you have seperate poly groups set up for everything). Then go to the “smooth slider” of the deformation section of the tool menu. Make sure XYZ are all checked(or not, if you have a precise form that can be accuratly deformed along the various axies, and you get crafty), and move the slider all the way to the left several times. You should see the unmasked portion tighten up quite a bit ( sometimes to the degree of badly deformed geomtry, so you might have to “undo”). This works best if the tool subd level is only at the second or third highest level when you do this, as the denser subd levels tend to resist deformation much more strongly, but the lowest subd level is too structually “weak”, and wont be able to hold the changes through to the highest subd levels.
Once you get your base mesh to maintain the geometric qualities youd like it to all the way up to the highest sub d levels, I think youll find youre able to sculpt and alter form in the low and mid-range subd levels much more quickly and intuitively in ZB than you could in an traditional modeller, using the move tool, and , draw tool, along with very light intensities of the “smooth” and Inflate" functions to even things out periodically…without imprinting with all the “playdough” like qualities you’re trying to avoid. And the Symmetry functions in ZB are brilliant. If youre like me, with practice, youll find yourself wondering what the justification is at all for doing static imagery in an animation package.