Turn off shadows and AOcclusion in the render settings (Fig.23). Make sure you are using a MatCap type material (Fig.22). Create a white texture and put it in the texture slot. Instead of baking the cavity map into your poly painting you can create a material for this to get greater freedom later on in the comp. The current pass can be seen in Fig.20 and the combined passed in Fig.21. In this case I just thought it looked better to put it on top of the key and rim lights (Fig.19). Letting the AO multiply the rim and key lights can make the model look dirty. I usually put AO further down in the layer stack and only let it affect the environment light. In ZBrush AO is created with an array of depth maps though (Fig.18).ДЇor this comp I set the AO with Multiply as the blending mode. Think of it as longer raytrace in mental ray. Gamma is nice to lower as well to get a broader AO. Therefore I usually lower the blur radius to 1. I prefer an AO with height definition of the shape of the character. Don't forget to activate AOcclusion in the render settings (Fig.17). To render AO you need at least one light activated that can cast shadows. The current pass can be seen in Fig.15 and the combined passed in Fig.16. It is masked with an inverted version of the shadow pass (Fig.14). On top is a solid color adjustment layer with Normal as the blending mode. Exposure controls the light intensity and Photo Filter gives it a cold, blue tint. It is a bit unrealistic that this light hits some of the parts of the right side of the face (camera point of view), but I think it adds to the definition of the forms in the face (Fig.13).ДЄgain there's a shaded pass on the bottom with Add as the blending mode. This light has a high amount of blur, just as the key light. The function of this light is to show the shape of the character, since it comes in from the side/back (Fig.12). This pass was rendered with a normal light. The current pass can be seen in Fig.10 and the combined passed in Fig.11. It is masked with an inverted version of the shadow pass (Fig.09). Here I had another shaded pass on the bottom with Add as the blending mode and a Photo Filter layer to give it a warm, orange tint. Since the blur is quite high I could use a low resolution on the shadows (Fig.08). Therefore I set the blur on the shadow quite high. I wanted to render this image with a very indirect lighting and indistinct shadows. The reason is that the light cap light and shadow pass should not affect your other render passes (Fig.07). Don't forget to save out your light cap (for later access) and then delete all lights in the light cap. This light is supposed to be the main light. The current pass can be seen in Fig.05, and the combined passes in Fig.06. Use Alt + click just below each of the three top layers to make them only affect the layer on the bottom of this stack and no layers further down. It is masked with an inverted version of the shadow pass from the environment light/light cap. On the top is a solid color adjustment layer with Normal as the blending mode. The Exposure layer controls light intensity, while the Photo Filter layer gives it a slight green tint. You can find theses settings in Light > LightCap adjustment (Fig.03).ДЄs you can see in Fig.04, there's a shaded pass on the bottom. Otherwise the materials will share the same curves. Don't forget to activate Use Material Curves to make sure that your diffuse and specular curves on the materials should be used while rendering. The idea is to simulate bounced light from the environments, so you don't want a very specular light (Fig.02).ДЄdjust the exposure etc., if you need to get a good intensity on your lighting. If you are making an environment pass, make sure samples in Light > Background are about 2-3 to create a very ambient lighting. Keep the HDRi in the texture slot so it can be used as environment reflection in materials (Fig.01). Press the texture button in Light > Background to import the image that you want as a base to create your lights from. This guide was written while I was using ZBrush 4 R2 and rendering with BPR Render. After posting the image Angry Faun on ZBrush Central, I got a lot of questions about my render and comp workflow.

Extruding a mask in zbrush 4