Reconstruct Subdivision in ZBrush
duckbomb
Posts: 585
Hello! I'm hoping somebody out there has more success with something than me... I'm trying to sculpt some morphs into some characters in ZBrush, and running into a few problems.
Specifically, I would like to run a dynamic simulation on the mesh HOWEVER Zbrush has a 250K poly limit. In order to sculpt and render this character at SubD 4, I need to export it as an OBJ and re-import into DAZ this way because we are unable to sculpt HD morphs and load them back in natively. That's fine, but in order to drop the mesh below 250K polys I need to use the "reconstruct subdivision" feature in ZBrush which caculates the opposite of subdividing the mesh and making it lower poly.
My issue, is that when I create my morphs at that new lower subdivision level and then bump it back up to the origional poly count and export, the thing explodes in DAZ when I import the morph. The morph, itself, loads fine (as teh vert count never changed considering I dropped the SubD, made the morph, and then put it right back where it started), but when I use the slider all of the polygons go everywhere and it's a big mess.
Does ANYBODY have success using the reconstruct subdivision function in ZBrush while still being able to import a morph indo DAZ?
It's a shame we have to pick either high-res or lo-res sculpting when trying to do something like this. In a REAL workflow, I would start my scupting as a lo res mesh and then bump up as I go, but sadly that's not possible as far as I can tell. I hope I'm wrong, though. Anybody?
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Comments
That won't work. Why are you limited to 250k? Are you using Core or something?
Ah, ok, well, thank you for the confirmation!
The "Dynamics" function is limited to 250K, and I was trying to run some simulations on a figure, itself. The bigger thing would be that effective sculpting really relies on moving through subdivision levels from low to high for best results (at least the way I work), and this is impossible because I have to commit to aruond 4 million polys right off the bat with no chance to do less.
I wonder if it would be more efficient to reconstruct subdivision on a duplicate, doing my lo-res work, and then working through subdivisions and PROJECTING would be a viable solution? The issue there is that the textures often tend to not line up exactly. I think the problem here is that these are all workaounds to the issue of not being able to load in morphs at various subD levels. I understand that decision, so I dont' want to debate that here, I'm just looking for viable alternatives.
It won't work because DAZ and Zbrush use differente subdivision algorythms. DAZ uses Catmark while Zbrush uses Catmul-Clark. When you use the "reconstruct subdivision" feature in ZBrush you are breaking the vertex order of the model. That's the reason why it explodes when loading it back to DAZ.
One solution is to use Blender's addon "Transfer Vertex Order":
The addon restores the correct vertex order to your mesh so you can now load it back successfuly as a morph in DAZ.
(Maybe Maya has something similar but I don't know as I have never used Maya.)
Hope this helps,
Martha
OH COOL! Thank you for the info! It's really nice to know the technical "WHY" behind why it's doing what it's doing, even if it doesn't change the end result. I'm so hesitant to adding a 4th program to my already blown-out pipeline, but if this works it's worth looking into. I'll take a peek and see if I can figure it out.
I'd be interested to know what others people solutions are for addressing this kind of functionality, or if anybody else is struggling with it like I am. Perhaps I'll start a thread on it at some point, it would be very interesting to see :)
THanks everyone!