3D Sculpting Inside Geometry Mess

[Shanitch]

I have been following along with the sculpting course and have run into quite a mess and was hoping someone would have some tips on how I can get this sorted out. I noticed the sculpting was acting a little funny around the neck, but didn’t realize things went horribly wrong until I tried to add hair. I had checked in Edit mode and with so much geometry it did not look THIS bad. But in X-ray under object mode, below is what I see. I have tried a few things to fix it and cannot wrap my noob brain around it. I have tried:

1. Deleting the neck and am left with a gaping hole into my model. I cannot figure out how to close the sculpture and snaking the edges close together and smoothing them hasn’t been successful. Selecting the edges and adding a face has been unsuccessful for me as well- I can’t sculpt the new face.

2.) Applying a high remesh modifier- which still has most of the lumps and inside geometry.

3.) The closest I have gotten has been selecting the mesh and carefully merging by distance and pulling the vertices out. But this is taking FOREVER and I would like to know a better way for future mistakes as well.

Any and all help is appreciated! I do not know the correct term for this and Google is stumped when I try to ask it.

[NP5]

I would as you tried, go to edit mode and delete the ‘mess’ inside’. Then fix up any holes in edit mode too, you can’t do that in sculpt mode.
If you can do it by the surgery of cutting the neck off and dealing with the inside from there, replacing a largely still tubular neck should not be too hard. By selecting all the open edge verts and E extruding then down as a new neck. Then Ctrl R add many loop cuts to make a reasonable density of faces. Closing any holes anywhere by selecting the open edge verts and pressing F for face. Or merge to center may well work in many cases.

Yes it is a lot of messing about and not easy if new to it. It may be simpler to start again but you have a lot invested in the good looking head already.

Avoiding it, um, check wireframe views occasionally, catch it early and fix.
Start with a more close shaped block modelled mesh so there is less chance of anomalies.
Be careful to sculpt in general shapes and refine in stages not do one area in detail first.

[Shanitch]

Thank you @NP5! I was under the impression that I couldn’t modify geometry that I added in Edit mode, but I didn’t have enough vertices to move (I had just slapped a face on the holes without subdivision). I am definitely going to check wireframe more frequently and I’m happy to report I have almost sorted these tumors out! Definitely a lesson I will not soon forget.

[FedPete]

The remesh option could be a simpler action?
That’s the step you do with the Orc Block model.
Merging all -overlapping- objects into a single, clean object.