Light Placement & Light Shadows

[system]

Hi zbrush sculpting enthusiasts,

I recently got into sculpting after learning the basics of blender, overwhelmed by the complexity of both programs, however I managed to do a character or two. So far, so fun. Total noob at hand.

Problem is: I’m currently working on this dude and actually he’s not supposed to look like an hitler impersonation.
The shadows are obviously really strong.

I’ve digged through light placement & light shadows options, tried different shadow intensity and shadow curves, however I can’t seem to adjust the bpr so I get a more soft subtle shadowing like in the realtime preview. I read that it may have to do with how the light hits the tool according to size, but I’ve also tried numerous scalings.

Any advice for a noob? Would be thankful for lighting advice, tutorials and links aswell. Every kind of feedback regarding char design is appreciated aswell of course.

Thanks in advance.

Attachments

[Altea]

In this menu
Render -> BPR shadow -> Rays and Angle

By default both rays and angle will give you hard shadows but will be quick.

Angle will increase the dispersion of the shadow creating a wider feather depending how much you increase. Values as 30 are ok. Very high numbers will look rather as ambien occlusion, if the rays give enough resolution to support it.

Rays is the resolution of the feather, with more rays smoother will be. This is what will increase the render times as it needs to create a new shadow for each ray in slightly different angles to create the smooth effect. 60 will be very smooth. Lower values of angle needs less rays to be kept smooth:

Shadows can be enabled independently in each light. By the way shadows in Zbrush can have limitations if you try several lights as they will ignore the shadows produced by other lights. You won’t get a rim in a shadow projected by another light.
Another point to have in mind, Matcaps won’t be in sync with projected shadows as they don’t have real time lighting. In order to get a more coherent interaction with shadows you need standard materials.

[system]

Thanks a lot Altea.