Lighting

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Because a ZBrush scene has depth and material properties, virtual lights are required to illuminate the canvas and the objects it contains. The Light Palette provides controls for setting and adjusting these lights. ZBrush calculates shading based on the number, type, strength, and position of the lights in the scene.
Lights are added or subtracted from a scene simply by switching them on or off. First click a light icon to select it, then click again to switch on or off; the icon will be colored orange when the light is on. The selected light (which can be on or off) is indicated by an outline around the icon (gray in the default color scheme). Once a light is selected its properties, such as direction and intensity, can be adjusted.

Changing The Light Direction

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You can place up to eight lights in a scene and change their properties at any time. All lighting properties are saved with the ZBrush scene file. By default, ZBrush has a single light placed in the scene.
Lights are selected and positioned using the thumbnail part of the light palette, as shown below.

Click on a light to select it, and click again to turn it on or off. Click on the color patch to the left of the Intensity slider to cause the light color to be set to the primary color, or click and drag from the color patch to any other part of the screen to set the light’s color to the color under the mouse cursor when you release the mouse button.
The placement sphere in the upper left of the palette shows where the currently selected light is placed, and also shows the combined effect of all lights currently turned on. Drag the small orange rectangle to change the placement of the current light; click it to toggle it from a front light to a backlight, or vice versa.

Light Modifiers

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Light Color (color patch): Set by selecting a color with any of the color pickers and clicking on the color patch. You can also click and drag from the patch to the canvas to pick a color. Light color is visible on the preview sphere, but you must be in Best Render mode to see its effect in the scene.

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Intensity: Sets the strength of the selected light. Range = 0 to 2.0.

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Intensity Curve: The intensity curve controls the intensity fall-off from the center of the light to the edge of its effect.

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Ambient: Sets the amount of non-directional global ambient light. Range = 0 to 100. Default = 3.

Shadows

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In the Shadow subpalette you can set shadow properties.

Shadows set in the Light palette only show in a Best Render. The Shadows button in the Render palette must be switched on.

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Shadow: Enable shadow casting for the light selected here. Global shadow casting must also be turned on to render shadows. See Render:Render Shadows.

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Intensity: Controls the opacity of the shadow. Range = 0 to 100. Default = 75.

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Shadow:Shadow Curve: Shadow Curve takes effect when rendering using Render:Best. The shadow curve determines how shadows fade. For example, to achieve very black, hard-edged shadows, set the shadow curve to be a straight line from the lower left to the top left, and then a straight line from the top left to the top right.

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Length: Since ZBrush scenes are not fully 3D, there is no information about the back sides of objects. The shadow renderer treats all objects as if they had infinite depth and the length of the shadow is set here. Range = 10 to 500. Default = 50.

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ZMode: A shadow-casting mode that does take object depth into account and produces superior results in some cases. If an object is only partially visible, it may not produce complete shadows.

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Uni: The Unified Shadows slider reduces noise artifacts from standard ZMode shadows, producing more unifed shadows and faster rendering.
If the Rays slider is set to a small value, this can produce more painterly shadows.
This slider is active only when the ZMode button is pressed.

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Blur: Determines how crisp or soft the edges of the shadow are. Higher values result in softer edges. Range = 0 to 7. Default = 4. ----
Rays: Activates the Global Shadows feature by specifying the number of shadow-casting rays that are used to evaluate each pixol of a shadow. Higher values result in more accurate shadows, but with an increased rendering time. For best results, ZMode should be active if the number of rays is set to higher than 1. Range = 1 to 500. Default = 1.

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Aperture: Affects the sharpness of shadow edges by simulating a narrow or a broad stream of light for each ray. Higher values result in wider light rays and softer shadow edges. Range = 0 to 180. Default = 90.

Note: The following points apply:

• The higher the number of rays, the lower you will usually want your Aperture to be set to. For example, 500 rays at the default Aperture will cause the shadows to all but disappear.
• It is recommended to set a scene’s lighting up with only 1 ray in order to allow quick adjustments. ZMode with only one ray will often result in unusual light artifacts such as holes in the shadows. Don’t worry about this. When you are satisfied with the lighting, increase the number of rays and decrease the shadow Aperture before doing your final render.
• Material such as with the Diffuse Curve shown can result in extraordinary renders when used in conjunction with Global Shadows.