ZBrushCentral

transparent mesh while working??

ZBrush Artworks
#1

hi there -could one of you old timers explain this irritating phenomenon?
i have modeled a face from a 3d sphere and divide it once and now the mesh has become transparent when i’m working in ‘quick’ mode. should one division of a standard sphere result in this.? or have i pressed something i shouldnt have? also the accuracy of the cursor seems to have gone kind of haywire and doesnt correspond with the points.

i have tried reloading the tool but it seems to be a permanent effect

i’m using 1.55b -a mac(2gb)-and other than dividing once i did some selective smoothing
any ideas?

#2

You should unclick the “Double” button that automatically activates. I think it’s in the modifier options.

#3

Well, I don’t know what you should do, but at least let me say this: amazing model!!! Don’t forget to keep us updated!!! Isurelly will want to see it finished :+1: :+1: :+1:

#4

thanks ken!! that was it !! it was driving me crazy!!
:+1:

EDIT - no that wasnt it!
double was pressed but i’ve unpressed it and its still the same!!

i want to go in and work on her lips but with that see through thing happening its just too confusing!

#5

The “dots” Button enable (Menu Transform)gives transparent only when you move in edit Mode !
So you have again press a special button :slight_smile:
Look also the “divide” Button of the menu Transform (it’s modify the apparence at screen (not the geometry :slight_smile:
Pilou
ps And again Press CTRL when the mouse is over an icone for the help on line !
Pss Cool Model :cool:

#6

Ron, I had the exact same problem happen with my first piece of ZB work that I was actually really pleased with.
I never solved the problem. I did try saving it as a tool, and a unified mesh, restarting ZB and starting over importing them, but I still had the same problem. I thought it was glitch because it never happened again. But if I were to try solving this again I would save as an .obj email it to a friend that had LightWave. (Lightwave can import some very high polly models on a Mac vs. Maya which would crash) and just re-save it again as a .obj out of lightwave, and import it back into ZB.
That’s the extent of my trouble shooting. I’m not a ZB expert either though. There may be an easy answer to this. I never found it. :qu:

BTW Ron. Really nice modeling. :slight_smile:

#7

I’ve had this problem too. Of course, now that I try to replicate it, I can’t!

Apart from the suggestions above, maybe restarting your machine might help? If its a problem with your video card, this could possibly fix it.

As for the innacuracy of the tool, try increasing or decreasing your model by an order of magnitude. Programs like maya and wings can get jittery if you work too large or small, maybe zbruh suffers the same problem.

Both are very annoying problems, I wish I had better answers for you…

Good luck,

-matt

#8

Something like this happens when you are dealing with dense meshes; ZB does it as a way to speed up rotating/moving the model.

To try and stop it, go to Preferences>Draw and increase the value in the Adots slider.

When running out of resources, ZB also sometimes snapshots the model while keeping another ‘copy’ of it in edit mode; this could explain the cursor inaccuracies. Another possibility is that because you are seeing only the wireframe you are putting the cursor on points at the back of the model.

Make sure to check out the value under Preferences>Mem>Compact Mem. Set it to just below the amount of RAM you have for best performance.

#9

Wow, I wish I could do this on purpouse, however I don’t think it has something to do with the amount of polys/dots or even a button that you’ve pressed (but if you did let me know which one it was :stuck_out_tongue: ).

The SOLUTION: This kind of thing happend to me before. Your transparent mesh looks really close to the screen, this happend to me when I made the model big to work on small details (such as lips). I think that after scaling your model to this large size you should try to move it backward in to the dept of your screen. Just move it back with ‘move’, hope it works, it sure worked for me.

#10

Hey Ron.

Great model!!

What document size are you working at. I’ve found that phenomenon happens when you edit a mesh on a document size larger than the default 640x480.

It may just be a case of working at a smaller document size.

#11

hey every one!! thanks so much for all the comments and suggestions! i tried every one and they all seemed like possibilities but the winner was… … u-jin!!! hooray!
i simply moved the head back to wards the clipping plain and voila!

thanks again everyone -
i’ll post an update soon
cheers

#12

well i dont understand! :frowning: u-jins solution worked -but only temporarily.
i have not divided the mesh any further -just started drawing out some ears from the head with move.
see fig1
itstarted acting very sluggish as i was doing this.
i even optimised a clone to see what would happen with a lower poly count - still transparent-see fig2

i even tried moving it right back into the clipping plane -fig 3 -because earlier on moving it deeper into the document helped - now as you can see, it doesnt-still transp.fig4

maybe some one recognises this effect- fig5
theres still some sort of transparency going on
when i draw the tool over other objects
-its partially embedded partially transparent as in the circled area -
perhaps this is a clue that someone has seen before?

i swear i have tried every thing every one suggested earlier.

thanks for your patience

#13

It almost looks like you have a copy of your object on the canvas that was drawn with ZSub. Try completely clearing the canvas (by exiting Edit mode and pressing Ctrl+N) and then draw the model again.

#14

hi matthew -
ive cleared , quit ,restarted -you name it !

i think that trans parency effect was due to a lower than100 rgb\z intensity setting and that it has nothing to do with the permanently transparent mesh when in 'quick/pf mode .
so that was a red herring- sorry.

perhaps i’ll make a red herring for the monday night challenge instead. :frowning:

#15

Try flipping the normals… I don’t recall where’s the button to it, but i think I saw this happen before. :slight_smile:

Edit: Found it. It’s in the modifiers’ tab, right side of double button. If you press double it should work too, since double makes both inside and outside of polygons look the same.
An example:

Flipped geometry

unflipped geo