Black rendering problem

[Anonymous]

I have been learning rendering and have a lot of problems with lights and the rendering just being black, however this latest really puzzes me. Black in one window(view) not in another.

As you can see upper left rendered fine, the rest just black. Any ideas?

[ntellery]

It looks to me like a graphic card error, a display problem. Possibly a memory issue.

RU using 23 or 64bit windows? and how much RAM do you have.

I would look into updating your graphics card driver, preferably to the version Adesk recommends but sometimes the latest one is good.  Adesk is often a few versions behind the latest one.

I would just restart at least and possibly reboot should sort it.

Acad seems poor at handling memory and there are a number of issues that occur with old memory not being dumped or refreshed. I've had renderings render what the drawing looked like previously and not the current drawing (ie. items that have been deleted still render etc.).

On the render, you might need to give yourself a floor, back walls and ceiling to get a good render with light bouncing off and include some lights.  not easy task so good luck.

[Anonymous]

I agree as I discovered that part of the menu not showing up.

After adjusting windows display for better performance, there were some visual changes.

I adjusted that again, but I don't think that is the problem.

I am running 32 bit vista with 4gb ram, large swap file and readyboost 8gb if needed. GTX8800.

Had memory crashes with Max and even autocad, but still doesn't makes sense.

I was just trying to use global ligting, but now I added a light wich works in the view.

I rotated the upper left window to show it's not the view that makes the difference.

I also zoomed out in the other windows and to my surprise, rendering showed up. (or should I call it rendering preview?!) , but in the others.

[Anonymous]

Just discovered that the menu disappeared again, after changinf the quality settigns from 1 to 2.

Like how is the render quality from 1-5 compares to the render preset from Draft to presentation?!

Are these two figthing each other?!

[ntellery]

Windows 32bit will limit the amount of memory that any one session of acad (or other program) can access.  I think it's 2gb.   Google '3gb switch' and you can allow a little more but it doesn' work well with all systems and could prove unstable (though easy to revert).

I don't know about ready boost but I don't know that it could work against how windows manages memory.

Having said that you shouldn't run into trouble with such small files but I suggest that after doing a number of edits and before doing large size HQ renders, save and restart and your memory will be refreshed.

Also Acad is not the easiest program to render in. I do all the time but not internals which require lots of lights and surfaces to reflect off.  It brags of having a realistic render but that's not helpful when what you want is a quick decent Q render.  I would suggest copying your light around a few times to get better lighting.  And still a floor at least with some reflective value. Also consider that in a room, light is being reflected back off walls and ceilings. In your model that light is disappearing into infinity never to return.

[Anonymous]

I appreciate your rendering advices but as not seeing anything in a window has to be something different.

I am able to see all the adjustments I am doing in this window and it will render, I don't want to go further until I understand this.

I am getting fed up fast, now I have -1 in quality. Is that possible?!

[ntellery]

I had trouble rendering the other day where the Ribbon said Medium but the Q was poor.

I opened the render preferences pallete (RPREF) and it said I had LOW set.  Further in the Ribbon there was only medium option and I couldn't change it to anything else.  

A product failure.  I'm afraid the rendering side is much of an afterthought and is not really up to standard with the rest of the product. And I say that whilst I use rendering functions everyday and would promote rendering inside ACA because it can be quick and easy (haha).

I would put my bet on your original problem of the black square being a graphics card / driver issue and a restart would reset it if not fix it.  Also what else are you running in the background.  Windows itself takes lots of memory.  Have you ALT-shift-DEL and select the task manager and you can review what's happening with your memory onboard (Kernel) and your physical memory and what your cpu cores are doing.

[Anonymous]

Yes. that is the same thing in that menu.

You say you could not change it, but the highlight will stay if you click on where "high" would be and stays there, but it also says on medium and messes up the quality setting so I get -1.

I have restarted it many times. It's been days I keep returning to it. doesn't help.

In that one view it rendered it even in a higher setting, since this is the 2013 student version, I am just thinking to download the 2012 or go to Photoshop, but since I have been using acad, I though I will start with this, but can't even get to materials and lighting and rendering if stuck with these kinds of problems.

thanks