Free Custom Zbrush LightCaps

[GarryLewis]

Want to light your models using real world environments in ZBrush?! Ive uploaded a free set of HDRI probe images for download. Accompanying them each HDRI is a corresponding Light Cap made from the HDRI probe. The first set of 4 hdr images and light caps are Alley, Train tracks, City tunnel and the Atlanta Flat Iron building. All are free to use for personal or commercial projects. Click on the image above to get to the download page.
I hope you like them. These were older ones I made, I'll be loading more this week!

Later,
Garry

[seraph769]

Hello Lewis. Thanks for sharing these Zbrush Lightcaps. I am curious as to how you would use them in Zbrush as I am not familiar with how to implement Ligthcap materials within Zbrush. Do you just create a new material and load the image on the new material as it you normally would to get the Lightcap effect on your Zbrush materials? Is there some special hidden menu that I yet discovered in order to use Lightcap materials? I'm sorry but I am not familiar with using Lightcaps though. I don't think I have ever used it before in Zbrush. Could you shed some light on this for those of us who are not familiar with it?

[GarryLewis]

Hello Lewis. Thanks for sharing these Zbrush Lightcaps. I am curious as to how you would use them in Zbrush as I am not familiar with how to implement Ligthcap materials within Zbrush. Do you just create a new material and load the image on the new material as it you normally would to get the Lightcap effect on your Zbrush materials? Is there some special hidden menu that I yet discovered in order to use Lightcap materials? I'm sorry but I am not familiar with using Lightcaps though. I don't think I have ever used it before in Zbrush. Could you shed some light on this for those of us who are not familiar with it?

Hello Seraph,
Well said! I may create a short little video tutorial should this get any more complicated in the future, but for now I'll write a simple walk thru below.

Tutorial(short):
Within Zbrush Open the top tab for "Light"
In the Light options open "LightCap"
Under Light cap select the option "Open"
Browse for the location where you've saved the lightcap files from my site.
Once you've selected the file and loaded your model you should see a lighting solution lighting your model.

Does this help?
There is alot more options you can tweek on your lighting.
This is not a material. Materials and lighting go hand in hand so you'll still need to work on your materials.

G

[seraph769]

Thanks for writing a mini tutorial on the Lightcap material. I'll try it out tonight to see if I can get it to work. So is the Lightcap material similar to the Basic Material that comes stock with Zbrush where you can control the direction of the light as well as the intensity of the light but just in HDRI style right?

[GarryLewis]

http://kungfujackrabbit.com/2012/fre...rry_lewis.html
4 free LARGE HDR images up already on the site. All of them are taken using my fish eye lens and the 5D Mark II so the resolution is really nice. I hope you like them. Please let me know if you like them and i will load more.

[tonare]

Thanks bud!

Very cool of you. I'm just now learning lighting in zBrush so these will be great to see how settings can be handled.

[GarryLewis]

You welcome. Im really liking these new ones just due to the very high res. It comes in at 300 dpi but if you look at it at the same res as professional studios like (moofe) the size they display in is 72 dpi. The size i see from their images is around 11,000. With this fish eye im using and the Cannon 5D though these free ones I loaded are over 30,000 in resolution. So Im pretty thrilled with the quality that im getting.

Hope you like them. Let me know if there are any in particular your looking for.

[massgard]

Also just learning lightning in ZBrush. Gonna give this a try tonight!

[GothicGrin]

Thanks Gary, that is really decent of you.

Thank you.

[GarryLewis]

I added a few more of the high res fish eye made HDRIs and you you find it by going to my site http://kungfujackrabbit.com/2012/fre...rry_lewis.html
or its hosted now on the VFX Mill here
http://www.vfxmill.net/vfxmill_freestuff.html

There is also a zipped up bundle of all the chrome probes, zbrush lightcaps, and latlong hdris all in one pack now at he bottom of both pages.

ALL Free
Happy lighting more to come soon! Please check back.
-Garry

[RyDarling]

Hi Garry,

Thanks for all of the free HDRI's! I'm curious to know a little bit more on how you go about creating your HDRI. I noticed you mentioned that you used the 5D with a fish-eye lens. I've also seen people talk about shooting a chrome probe or using a specialized Camera to get the full 360 degrees of the environment. Ultimately, I want to be about to capture the whole environment as well. I've tried this before with using my 20D (No Zoom/16-55 lens) thinking I could just splice together the images, but I had to make adjustments to my ISO to avoid extreme differences from one picture to the next. In the end I still got poor results. I've been chasing after this for some time now and would love to adopt a solid workflow for this.

Thoughts?

[RyDarling]

I learned a new term watching a videocopilot Tutorial called "equirectangular Photography" once I google searched this soooooo much information came back for tutorials on how to create this using Fish-eye lenses. the best one I was able to find was here:

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutoria...e-360/en.shtml I have yet to try it but the results look like what ZBrush comes with for use.

I think I answered my own question.

[abhaya]

GarryLewis It looks like panorama on picture was not optimized and aligned. Light is very interesting, but somebody did it wrong way. Even in free Hugin it is possible to align horizont.

[JohnYip]

Thanks for sharing Gary! im gona play around w em