Hi how can I cut away unwanted portions of mesh in Zbrush?

Cut as in delete, or hide? I'm assuming you mean delete.

It's been a while since I used Zbrush now, but as you might know there's a combination of buttons that can be held down, something like Shift and alt, or shift alt and ctrl, don't quite remember what it is, but when you hold em down (and possibly release one of them) you should be able to draw a square in the view, hiding everything within it.

Once you hid it, there should be a 'delete hidden parts of the mesh' button in the right menu. This will leave an open hole in the mesh though.

polycount != google

Slice Curve works great if you're using Dynamesh+Groups.

Otherwise there is a wide range of selection tools that you can combine with Tools: Geometry: Del Hidden. Works only on the lowest subdivision.

You seem to ask alot of questions about quite simple tools in ZBrush. I know ZB is quite hard to learn but theres tons of tutorials out there. Watch all the vids at ZBclassroom. Visit ZBC tutorial section. I strongly recommend Eat3D's hard surface 2.

To answer your question, it all depend what you want to do.

Do you simply want to delete some faces/areas from a current mesh? Mask > delete hidden

Do you want to delete part of the mesh but have the mesh stay closed (no holes)? slice curve > polygroups > dynamesh > delete hidden

There are many other ways, but it depends what you want for the final result.

Pictures would help.

I am new to Zbrush , I have followed some tutorials but there is somuch that I tned to focus on easier task for the moment and when I meet anobstacle I learn much faster using the tools ... so where is this slice brush I can't find anywhere ... ....

I hate to be rude but come on, man. This stuff is readily available with a simple search.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=zbrush+slice+brush

yuo might wanna use split hidden or group split rather than delete hidden as sometimes delete hidden loses a bit of detail on the top level

I have looked till now to the first 8 videos and some just click something without saying what and appears the slice thing , others dont even have the audio and some other are timeplapses .. I looked even on the zbrush main site and I couln't find the damn butto combo to summon that slice thing ...

Actually even some videos that show this dynamesh do not explain how they got on the geometry tab , in my tab there is no dynamesh ...

That's because you're probably using an older version of Zbrush that doesn't have dynamesh (or the slice curve tool).

Z4R2 is the latest version (with Dynamesh), though an even newer version will be out in less than a week.

Ahhhh that's why I have zbrsh 4 ... any way to do without Dynamesh ?

I was looking all over and I wasn't finding this dynamesh ...

Dynamesh is in ZB4 r2. You probably need to upgrade. Its a free upgrade btw.

We still need pictures though. We need to know what the mesh is and what you want to achieve.

This is what I am trying to do right now , I just wanted to cut some bad estruding pieces of geometry that come out after an extraction of one of those fiber stuff...



On a side note ... is this the best way to make all those leather wrappings around those small wooden sticks? or another way woudl be better? now I will keep this as is even couse is anyway for my learnng and a game mod , not pretending to be 100 % perfect but to learn for next stuff I am doing usually a lot of those leather wrappings around somethng and instead of using a spline path thing in 3dsmax and make it follow by a mesh there to export here I preferred to mask and extract stuff , but is not easy to make the spirals and connect the pieces so are just a messy load of flat extracted circle bands around some points....

I know this is probably not the best way but I guess I am to new to figure out other ways .... Any ideas about?

Any ideas on a workflow?

What exactly are you trying to cut off, the ends of the spokes?

now nothing , it was just a bad extrusion of one of the stripes wrapped arount the sticks....

But I sincerely think that this is not the best way of making a wrapping around something ... what woud be the best way or approach considering also 33dsmax and not just zbrush?

I have tought of spline paths but is not that easy for complex knots or the like , I have tought of the masking approach of that "famouse" free tutorial , but comes out pretty rough and not precise , I have tried my approach of extracting pieces and overlapping but works only for a limited purpouse and not for complex interconnected overlapping stuff ... I mean like ropes knots, leather stripes wrapped around a stick like the ones I posted etc...

For something like that, I'd probably just use a bunch of cylinders or cubes squashed into a suitable overlapping leather loop shape in Zbrush. It won't be entirely realistic, but as long as you lay them out in a sensible fashion, it shouldn't ever be particularly evident that they're not joined.