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Prepare your own scene for z-depth rendering
You should have your scene ready for this step, any scene would do, as long as you target to make a z-depth out of it.
In my case, I want to have it pretty simple.
Simple scene, enough to define depth.

Setting up object for z-depth rendering
To get started:
First, you have to select all the objects that you want to be rendered. Mostly, objects that are visible to the camera view.

Then:
1] Switch from 'Display Layer' to 'Render Layer' and click on the "Create new layer and assign selected objects".
2] Right-click on the new render layer and goto `Presets` and select `Luminance Depth`. What ever happens after selecting the preset, that's very normal.

Now it's ready.
3] All you have to do is RENDER. Your render should something similar to the image below.

Now, that's good.. But if you feel like you want to define more depth, feel free to adjust the default settings.
To do that, select the material override button in the new layer to show its attributes, then click on the button next to the `Out Color` Slider to reveal its range controller. Now you can start playing with these values to achieve you desired look.
See image below.

After some tweaking, this is my final z-depth. Ready for use.

Tutorial End
You just learned the method of rendering a z-depth image directly to the renderview. As you notice, the render time is pretty fast, saves so much time without having to wait that long.
ZDepth image rendering is very useful, it has several uses, one is for post processing the DOF (depth-of-field), you can achieve instant results in real time adjustment, as compared to the one-pass render with DOF, which is computationally expensive that will also introduce very slow render times.
There you have it. smile.
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