No shadows in LightCap - No Default Light after using LightCap

[treegemmer]

I can add lights in LightCap and everything seems to work except no shadows, which do render (BPR) with the default light. Shadows are enabled everywhere I can find in the interface. Also after I delete all lights in LightCap, the default light is not re-enabled. Even after restarting zbrush - all is black. I did find someone with a similar issue many years ago - seems like it was a bug with the initial implementation of LightCap in 2014 or so. Could it still be a bug that was never fixed? Maybe I’m doing something wrong. I’m new to ZBrush.

I have tried reinstalling ZBrush. I’m seeing this in ZBrush 2018 - Trail Version. This is in Windows 10, with Ryzen 2400G and latest Radeon Driver.

Is anyone out there using LightCap with 2018? Any advice? Thanks!

[Spyndel]

Hi @treegemmer!

I don’t have any way of easily testing that version of ZBrush, but in the current version it seems to work as expected (image follows):

Few things to keep in mind:

1. Make sure your light is angled in a way where it can actually cast shadows onto a visible surface. When a “new light” is created in a center position on the lightcap preview sphere, the light is aimed directly at the object, and would only can shadows if there is a surface directly behind it. I had to raise the light to get a good top-down angle for the shadows to show up on my surface.

2. If using Matcap materials, note that they have their lighting information baked in, and will not update with changes to the scene lighting. They can also have strange interactions with scene lighting. Stick to standard materials for a more intuitive lighting interactivity.

[treegemmer]

Thanks Spyndel! Part of the problem was MatCap materials and the other part was having Transform > Quick turned on.