Zbrush: Splitting Lashes, Eyes, Mouth into SubTools Problem

falph

I've been tinkering around with learning ZBrush and decided to try some morphing on Genesis 3 Female. I decided to get fancy (big mistake) and triedsplitting the eyes, lashes and mouth/teeth into seperate subtools so I wouldn't have to futz around with masking them all the time while morphing the head. After sculpting for a few hours, I merged the subtools back down and imported the .obj back into Studio and I got the dreaded geometry doesn't match error.

To test, I imported a fresh Genesis and made note of the "Total Points" listed in the figure. I split the eyes, lashes and mouth and it ADDED 50+ verts to the total points! Oddly though, if I immediately merge back down with weld checked, it went back to the correct number of points. I tried merging/welding my morphed version again and on that one, the vert count didn't go back down to what it should be after the weld, it kept the 50+ extra points (hence the geo error in DS).

So it seems like if you split the eyes and such out into subtools and actually move anything on the rest of the head, it won't weld properly when you merge it back down. Unfortunately moving things around is kind of the point of a morph. Anyone else use the split to subtool method to get rid of the mouth and lashes and such when making custom morphs? Is there a trick I'm missing?

KurzonDax

I am by no means an expert on Zbrush.  However, I don't mess with splitting it up in to subtools.  If you use GoZ to send the mesh to Zbrush, you can use the auto polygroups by UV function to segment the mesh into groups.  The shift-ctrl click on the face, and everything else will be hidden, including eyes and eyelashes.  The lips, however, will remain visible since they are part of the face UV.  I suppose you could mask them and create a new polygroup with the lips.  Just remember to shift-ctrl click on a blank area of the canvas to unhide the rest of the mesh before you GoZ it back to D|S.

I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that depending on the changes you make, when you try to merge subtools back together, it might change the vertex order, even if it didn't change the count.  However, others around here with far more Zbrush experience than I might know of some way to make it work.  

falph

Thanks Dax. I think I've just conceded to just add them to a polygroup and hide them.

Cris Palomino

For morphs, don't split the mesh as the vertex order will be lost.  Polygroups is definitely the way to go.  You can also paint masks and save them as alphas to apply to the mesh in the Texture palette under Create>New from Polypaint.  You want to hide parts that are not part of the particular texture map (face has lips and ears).  There are other ways to do it using Texture Atlas, if you wanted to do more than one texture map at the same time.