Creating useful lighting passes for paint-over

Set up and export 3D lighting passes that provide a clean, adjustable base for paint-over work.

What it is

Use 3D lighting to create a base for painting. Decide which passes you need, such as a grayscale form render, shadow pass, or specular and highlight pass for materials.

Build a simple scene with neutral materials, limited post effects, and separated elements. Export passes such as diffuse light, shadows, reflections, ID masks, and depth when needed.

Set the resolution, camera, and render quality for crisp, manageable files. Keep noise, strong contrast, and baked-in color casts low. Name and organize passes for use in your painting file.

Why it matters

Useful passes preserve adjustable form, value, and material information for paint-over work. Weak passes can introduce baked-in effects, muddy values, noisy edges, or missing information that requires manual correction.

You can check it when

✓List the passes a task needs, such as diffuse, shadows, ID, or depth, and produce only those passes.
✓Import the main lighting pass into a painting file and use it as a base with clear form and value structure.
✓Check that edges and shadows remain clean, with low noise and few artifacts.
✓Rebuild the paint-over stack from named and grouped files and layers without guessing their contents.

Creating useful lighting passes for paint-over

What it is

Why it matters

You can check it when

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