Hey guys,
I am having some issues with lightcaps and HDRs. I took a look at some tutorials and their BPR renders look fine even on a first time pass. Mine look like total garbage and I am at a loss on why. The top part has really hard/ illogical shadows and the lower torso area seems to not have any shadows at all. Here are some pics to show what I mean.
If someone could help me I would really appreciate it.
This is a version if I turn off some of the light cap shadows:
Ok I found out it isn’t the lightcap’s fault. It has something to do with shadows being cast behind the model. Here is an update pic to explain what I am refering to.
Thank you very much for the response. However, I already made sure the lights were turned off. Here is another screen cap with some settings and a before BPR and after. Keep in mind only the upper left key light is using shadows.
Sooooooooooo nobody knows anything about this?
First I would try the following open your lightcaps windows and ensure to set shadows for each light to 0 percent. You should be able to determine which light is casuing the nasty shadow.
Thank you for the reply Squeige. The only light I have shadows turned on is the light in the upper left which I noted in the last screen cap. From what I can tell, the problem is that if you have a light with shadows too far to the side of your model the light is going to put a shadow on the opposite area where the light doesn’t touch. I tested this theory with a simple sphere and the demo soldier with the same result. One would think if you put a light on the other side it would light up the strange, phantom shadow. That doesn’t seem to be the case. I don’t know if this is just an unseen glitch or what but it is definitely a show stopper if you want your shadow lights far left, right, etc.
Very strange, anyways, thank you for the suggestion and if you have any other ideas I’d appreciate it.
Actually I am not sure you are following me, I am not referring to the lights interface. Under the lightcaps interface you have several lights. Each light has a light, specular and shadow setting that go from 0 to 100. Read up the documentation under lightcaps for more information.
Again I cant stress it enough under lightscaps menu, not under “lights”.
Thank you again for the response Squeige.
I see we are talking about the same thing. I am just using the wrong word for the menu haha. I am indeed using the Lightcaps menu but addressing it in this post wrong. For the shadows, the only light that has the shadow slider beyond 0 is the light in the upper left (the later pics I posted here are the ones I am referring to, not the first two pics. Sorry for the confusion). I think what I am going to have to do is just render out the other passes then adjust the lights and render out the shadow layer and fix it in Photoshop.
Ok look at my attachment, see how there is a field called light index, each one is a light perse. They are not your zbrush traditional lights, it is the new lightcap system meant to enhance your already existing lights. Now for every light in this menu there is a shadow option, make sure you go through all of them and set to 0.
Hey man!
Thank you again but your last suggestion is something I checked and double-checked before I even posted on here the first time. It did eliminate the strange shadow which is how I originally found out it was the shadows causing the mess. I know my way around ZBrush and lightcaps fairly well, which is why this issue is so baffling because I’ve never run into it before.