hello, I’m not able to see my BPR shadow and Ambient Occlusion passes when I use the flat material during bpr. This was incredibly helpful for tweaking my shadow and AO passes. Is there a work around if this ability is entirely disabled for R2? The tiny preview I get when I hold my mouse over the BPR passes window is far to small.
Thanks.
same problem, but + Depth cue don’t work… its crazy or what?
Yes, my depth cue isn’t working either, i drag out the points and nothing happens after I render.
I have the same problem, too. 
It’s a big issue to me.
I usually test shadows and AO with the flat material in BPR to see more clearly.
And when I changed the shadows color, nothing happend.
Hope anyone can help us!!! 
same problem here. that’s a bit annoying.
also, has anyone else noticed, that the AO is not even in the actual render? At first I thought it was just very subtle, but it’s not there at all.
Another thing I find a bit strange is, that when you render out a shadow pass, the shadow always seems to be at 100% intensity/strength in there, even if you set it at 1% strength. I don’t know if that is an actual bug. I guess, you just have to change it’s opacity in photoshop then…
hendrik F, yes, there’s no AO, its suck!
I don’t understand why more people aren’t having an issue about this, although it’s good to see I’m not the only one. I’ve seen a lot of other professionals use the flat material to test their shadow and AO passes before finalizing and going to photoshop, heck that’s where I got the idea. I find it frustrating that support hasn’t even stated whether this was taken out and not possible anymore, or if there is some work around.
I solely use Zbrush for rendering and am entirely dependent the workflow I’d established in Z4. I see the power of lightcap, but I still need to figure that out. I’m grateful for the support threads, but I’d be far more grateful to have an answer, even if it’s one simply confirming the fact, and that I’m not doing anything wrong.
+1
Well, I got an email from support. They said that they’re aware of this issue, and are working on it!
For the mean time they suggested to turn the ambient O slider all the way to 100 and have all others off. Not sure what he meant by this exactly, but I am still going to play around and see. Good to know that they know.
Here is a lil tutorial I made to show a how the work around from Paul Gaboury of pixologic support happens. My initial impression is that it’s alright, just a little more pale in comparison to the export, hopefully a temporary fix, I don’t want to have to test my shadow and AO passes like this forever. On the plus side it still lets you fine tune your edges and fall offs for the final composition, you just don’t get the value depth or exactness apparent with the flat material in zb4r1.
Hope this helps anyone with the same issues!
Loxaraz Thanks man! maybe will try that, but for now I just export and render in R1
Oh, I forgot, you’ll also need to go to the environment panel underneath the material roll out and turn shadows and AO from the default 50% to 100%.
Then it works just like it did in the original zbrush4!
@Loxaraz
Wow~~~awesome! 
I just read your email.
Thank you for your professional help.
I’ll never forget all your efforts to help me!!! 
Thaaaaaaaaaaanks once again.
As I am learning and experimenting more and more with BPR I have one major issue I thought I would ask in this thread.
Does anyone know why I would be getting this in default BPR settings? I get mesh lines? Any help would be appreciated!
TIA
V
what kind of material are you using?
check the bpr shadow settings. It would help if you posted what everything is set to. But my guess is that there are not enough rays, or you preblur is completely off.
Also try to reinitialize zbrush. preferences>initialize (it’s the first one)
do they fix this AO/Shadow issue in 4r2b?
No, they didn’t even though they’re aware of it. I’m not sure about r3, I haven’t installed it yet.
Hi, I’m using zBrush 4R4 P2, and the problem persist. Plus, I cannot even try the workaround posted in the previous page because now the Flat Color material doesn’t have ANY OPTION in the Modifiers!!! 
Does anyone know how to fix this? I need to render AO in zBrush, please someone at Pixologic help!
The flat material is broken when trying to do this. What you need to do is use the basic material. Go to the material modifiers pull down, and set the Ambient slider to 100. Then the diffuse and specular sliders to zero. Turn on the ambient pass in the render menu and everything else off. That should do it.
Thank you Loxaraz, that worked! 