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BPR render passes in ZBr4R2

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey all. Working on a Precision 690, 8 gigs RAM. XPx64.

While I’m loving exploring the new features of R2, I’m a little unhappy with the changes in the BPR render passes. What was the “image” pass in 4 is now the “shaded” pass. This is the image merged with the shadow.

The shadow pass is still there but is so over-saturated with blacks that it’s pretty useless, and redundant as the color pass image already has shadow baked in to it.

It was much better before as I had more control over compositing the passes in Photoshop. Now I have to do more levels work on the “Shaded” pass and I’m not as happy with the results. Anybody know if there’s a way to restore the render pass set up from ZBr 4? Anyone know why the change was made? maybe there’s a great reason which I’m not aware of.

T

#2

I discovered something quite by accident that may help you.

  1. Create a new 512x512 16-bit greyscale image in Photoshop.
  2. Fill it with 0,0,0, (pure black) and save it as a flattened PSD.
  3. In ZBrush, press the UVTile button in the Tool:UV Map palette.
  4. Load the black texture using Tool:Texture Map.
  5. Press the transparent button right below that to activate it.
  6. Change your document background to pure white with no gradient.
  7. Under BPR Shadow, lower the FStrength value to 0.5.
  8. Render you mesh using BPR.

You should get something very similar to a shadow map, but much less contrasty. You can control how much contrast it has changing the FStrength, and it’s softness using the sliders for angle, blur, gamma, etc.

Edit: If you want something diffuse instead of what the shaded channel outputs, change the material to flat color, turn off BPR shadows, and render (make sure your transparent texture is off in the tool palette first).

Another Edit: Maker sure floor is on and large enough, or this won’t work.

#3

Hey, what an interesting process, I will definitely try it, thanks. Really great info.

T