Newbie having difficulty with some basics

#1

I really need quickfire help on this as I’m spending hours trying to get answers to basic questions. Maybe someone here can help!

I’ve been using Zbrush for about a day or two, just to give you an idea.

First off, dynamesh.

  1. What’s the difference between polymesh and dynamesh?
  2. If I start with dynamesh and pull out the mesh too far i can ctrl+drag away from the object and it will re-mesh it… but if I divide it a few times first, this re-mesh will cause it to revert back to the original density - why is this?

Secondly, working with divisions.

Ok, so I can divide the mesh to make it smoother and can travel up and down a few levels of this. But I’m starting to gather that in certain circumstances zbrush doesn’t like this and it seems to create certain dependencies on certain levels of division resulting in me getting lost as to what exactly my tool/model/sculpt is doing.

Example “can’t do such and such because you have multiple division levels” I think it says sometimes.

Any help would be awesome! thanks :slight_smile:

#2

You’re not really meant to be able to control the topology with dynamesh, that’s kinda the point, so you’re sort of working against it when you subdivide. No topology is going to stay too long, so don’t bother trying to manage it.

You can set the level of detail (don’t remember what it’s called off-hand) for Dynamesh, the higher the setting the more poly’s you’ll get when you re-mesh, allowing for more detail.

The point of dynamesh is to work freely and without thinking about polys. The difference between Dynamesh and a poly mesh is that Polymeshes (within a zTool) hold multiple levels of subdivisions and Dynamesh just holds one (or at least, you’ll lose the levels when you remesh).

You probably shouldn’t be working into really fine details while you’re still refining the overall shape of your model with Dynamesh, its going to be an uphill battle. Instead, use dynamesh until you’re happy with the overall form, then change that mesh back to a regular zTool, and finish up your details. If you need more topology control or detail than you can get at this stage, then you’ll have to retopologize your mesh either in Zbrush or in something like topogun or 3D Coat (which is very common).

Hope that helps.

#3

Ah, it’s starting to become clear I think!

Eight hours of tutorials and googling and no one mentioned this!

So, is it a common, sound practise to start with dynamesh to get the basic form, then convert to polymesh and go from there? Versus starting with polymesh straight off?

I’ve noticed that the dynamesh files in the lightbox have different file extensions than zbrush tools. So they’re quite different things altogether then.

Just one more thing, I’m not sure of the best practice for affecting the resolution of of dynamesh object?

Thanks!

#4

you can change the dynamesh resolution like the subdivision slider
look under dynamesh> resolution( not recommended to move the slider up and down, move it once)
once your done just press make polymesh 3d and then subdivide it to get your subd sliders working.
dynamesh can make your pc slow down but once you make it a polymesh 3d you can get more subd levels and its not hard on your pc like dynamesh,
dynamesh has its limitation and you can do more once converted to a polymesh3d

#5

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