Topology and Multi Resolution - I’m not getting it!

I just tested this - you are right - the voxel remesher dynamically adjusts itself when the mesh is pulled. This is behaviour I have not noticed before (as @knacki said, when we use it, we always choose and set resolutions beforehand). It does scales dynamically to my surprise (back and forth). I apologise for not acknowledging this sooner. It goes to show still that even more experienced/veteran users of this software, there’s the odd small surprise that can pop up and catch us off guard once in awhile. The solution is still simple; control the scaling yourself, you don’t need to stick to Nomad’s default voxel adjustments (so rare is this event this has never been brought up through a myriad of queries to my knowledge) - and as already echoed in this chamber, explore DynTopo workflow and follow all the suggestions that have been put forward by all contributors here to aid you.

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Thank you and that is a great video, I appreciate you sharing it with me. Impatience is definitely a VERY LARGE PART of my problem, jumping ahead too far and getting frustrated because the foundation wasn’t well planned.

No problem at all - I was certainly trying to prove that I wasn’t insane. Lol. My concern about controlling it manually after Nomad has calculated a resolution on my behalf is that when I’ve tried to low it, it shows in the quality and my sculpt is dramatically affected, so I’ve always tried to work FROM its point of calculation going up, never back. I am definitely thinking that Dyno is my solution and I’m really going to practice to get comfortable with that.

I really appreciate that…and to be quite honest with you, I’ve created sculpts that I’m insanely proud of, but multiresolution and topology has continued to be the bane of my existence because I knew that everything I do should be several million polygons! Lol. Here are a few pieces that I haven’t lost my love for over time




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Thanks so much. I don’t know, but for some reason, my iPad just will not play the videos that Stephomi sent me. Gonna hafta try on my PC when i get in to work, because I really want to understand this.

I only just recently tried to sculpt from one sphere, previously i was using several primitives, but then the issue became how much would go wrong because several primitives would be a low poly count because they didn’t require that much detail, but then when I needed to merge them with the primitives that had a considerably higher count, I didn’t know how to navigate what the resolution settings should be. I would think I’d completed a successful merge, only to zoom and find out some part of my sculpt was dramatically affected. Any tips about that type of situation?

Good that you point to Stephomi. He already gave you the suggestions you need. Now it’s time to test all of it and come back with detailed questions. Dyntopo is the tool you need as an intuitive sculptor without serious plan and concept.
As Stephomi said, switch on dyntopo, switch on constant, don’t put resolution too high. And as all others said, use wireframe to control your mesh.

In my opinion this workflow will be a pleasure for you. And use the grab brush, not move, transform, transform gizmo - the grab brush! It is the only one supported by dyntopo as far as I know.

Test this and show us the result. Do not use a project you are working on! Take a test sphere. Do not touch voxelremsh and multi resolution. It’s not made for you. Otherwise you would have figured out already. Keep this for later.

Just with dyntopo you can do amazing stuff. Look at this video. I made the head with bunch of details already an decided to add arms later. So I added a new layer, switched on dyntopo, took the grab tool and the fun starts!

Ok, I added a bunch of the very fine details later on layer above. But this way you are free from multi resolution and voxel remeshing! Free for almost ever :grinning:

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If the resolution would stay the same, you would loose all the details on the face.

DetailSize = ModelBoxSize / Resolution

You have to imagine your model is in a box, and the resolution will divide this box.
If you increase the box size (typically by pulling the shape), then you will loose detail if the resolution stays the same.

Internally, Nomad doesn’t store a resolution but rather a detail size.
This detail size stays the same, that’s why the shown resolution is adjusted when the model size changes.

I could have displayed the detail size instead of the resolution (like in Blender), the behaviour would be identical but the value shown would be the same.


As for workflow, with the way you are working I would suggest using dynamic topology (make sure to display the wireframe to understand what’s going if you toy with the settings).

Voxel remesher is nice when sketching a rough form or if you want to quickly merge/subtract forms, it also outputs a clean uniform topology (which can be handy sometimes).

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Ahh, and I have to correct myself. Also dyntopo works with same logic described above. But it is not that destructive, as only parts you are working on are changed.

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My final input on the matter, you only need to add the poly’s you intend on using and especially what the camera is going to view. This is to balance and use your hardware resources sensibly. A model in the several of millions can be absurdly detailed.

A quick example to show would be one of my previous sculpts, 3.6M poly’s - DynTopo enabled, and only detailing what I intend the camera to view (if I were to rotate him, his backside is not nearly as polished). I was able to cram detail through the roof whilst keeping it respectably low considering.

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Amazing…thank you so much. I really appreciate your contribution to this and will definitely experiment with all of the recommendations and I look forward to finding out which approaches work best for me! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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Thank you for providing a deeper explanation on this, when I finally recognised this behaviour earlier I had a hunch this was probably the case (resolution dynamically adjusting to preserve already placed details when warping the mesh)

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Thanks so much for this insight. Can you tell me why the grab tool instead of move? How is the functionality different?

Okay, I see what you’re saying. I’d previously only been using layers for hair texture, and sometimes clothing. It actually never occurred to me to use it to build out limbs and other areas of the subject. I will practice this tonight on a new sculpt and see how this works. I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions lol thanks for your engagement

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Drag tool can use dynamic topology whereas the move tool cannot.

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I used to use the chewing gum technique :wink:
And then I would get very frustrated with the topology until I leaned to block characters out with separate primitive objects/layers then merge them together afterwards. It was a bad habit to break free from. Even with traditional 2d art they do the same thing at the beginning to get shape and proportions correctly before filling out the character with details vs trying to draw a full body character without the guidelines. With the proper fundamentals even if one hasn’t drawn or sculpted in years you won’t forget to do this because they are basic shapes or forms. So one should always use basic shapes in 2d or 3D work :slight_smile:

Again bad habits die hard :slight_smile:

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Hi Holger,

are you german? If so so, please contact me! I have a lot of questions about Topology :smiley:

I think the video is not explaining the problem very well, becaus it is obvious that in the video he seems to use some kind of Multiresolution and he jumps back and forth all the time.

At 3:50 his model is in a Low-Poly Mode…and at 4:00 he is sculpting some Details on it.

I realize this post is super old, but here are my current thoughts on the matter since new features are being and have been released that will help this workflow: I usually block out the main forms of my sculpt with a mixture of primitives and voxel remeshing, but this leads to topology that’s terrible for sibdividing. So, here’s what I do about that, I make a good blockout (do it however you want, voxel/boolen/etc.) then I put that blockout through quadriflow (a feature which must be enabled in the debug menu, then found under misc in the topology tab). I usually decimate it first to bring down the poly count so it runs better and if the object needs to be symmetrical I trim it in half first, then quadriflow and then mirror it. Now, you should have a decent model to support multi resolution.

Sorry I’m a million years late but I know quadriflow was added recently and polygroups are coming soon, both of which are great for a multi resolution workflow.

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It’s good to have a discussion thread for basic techniques. There’s too few of them I find!

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I started out the same, using multires at a bit later stage to have nice topology to subdivide. But then I stopped using mutlires and subdivisions altogether, using only voxel remeshing and DynTopo now, even when detailing.

Not having to take care of a basemesh gives me a lot more freedom for example if I ever happen to need some more resolution in some place.

I’d create a base mesh at a much later stage now, when UVing or before posing/animating if it ever comes to that.

Apart from that, probably subdivision modeling would also make sense if I had a premade base mesh that I want to sculpt details on.