render = black

[g8keepr007]

I had no trouble with rendering in the past and I don't know what I've changed, but now I just get a black image when I render my scene. The image takes along time to render, so there is definitely calculations going on - but nothing to see. All scene lights are on and I've now reset all the render globals to their default. Can anyone tell me what the problem is?

[gmask]

It's pretty much impossible to tell without knowing anything about what renderer you are using standard or mental ray, which version of maya you are using and what is in the scene.

[g8keepr007]

It's Maya 4.5 unlimited and its the standard renderer

[gmask]

What is going on in the scene? Is it veryheavy with lots of geometry and textures?

[jtk77]

Do ytou have any textures that are missing?
Have you run a render Diagnostic? If so, what does it say.

[g8keepr007]

Theres not that much geometry, just about everything is textured though. The scene is a house in a valley. I dont see how the size of the scene would affect the rendering though. It must be a variable thats been changed somewhere....

[jtk77]

so you are sure that your texture files are linked correctly in the hypershade..
and render diognostic says? Anything?

[gmask]

I dont see how the size of the scene would affect the rendering though.

If it used all the available memory or your texture maps are too large they may not render at all resulting in black. How much memory does your system have?

[g8keepr007]

Okay the render diagnostic says this:
file -f -new;
select -cl;
// Result: ./untitled //
// MayaLive version 4.5// Saving runtime commands to : C:/Documents and Settings/Gregor/My Documents/maya/4.5/prefs/userRunTimeCommands.mel
// Saving hotkeys to : C:/Documents and Settings/Gregor/My Documents/maya/4.5/prefs/userHotkeys.mel
// Saving named commands to : C:/Documents and Settings/Gregor/My Documents/maya/4.5/prefs/userNamedCommands.mel
// Preferences saved. See Script Editor for details.
pv_performAction "C:/Documents and Settings/Gregor/My Documents/Maya/projects/OldHouse/scenes/OldHouse.mb" "Best Guess";
file -f -typ "mayaBinary" -o "C:/Documents and Settings/Gregor/My Documents/Maya/projects/OldHouse/scenes/OldHouse.mb";addRecentFile("C:/Documents and Settings/Gregor/My Documents/Maya/projects/OldHouse/scenes/OldHouse.mb", "mayaBinary");
// File read in 2 seconds.
// Result: 1 //
// Error: intersectSurface10 (Intersect Surface Node): failed to compute the result. //
// Error: intersectSurface17 (Intersect Surface Node): failed to compute the result. //
// Error: intersectSurface17 (Intersect Surface Node): failed to compute the result. //
// Error: intersectSurface10 (Intersect Surface Node): failed to compute the result. //
// Warning: Cycle on 'camera1.translateX' may not evaluate as expected. (Use 'cycleCheck -e off' to disable this warning.) //
// Warning: Cycle on 'addDoubleLinear1.output' may not evaluate as expected. (Use 'cycleCheck -e off' to disable this warning.) //
select -r Window1|curve2 ;
// Warning: File texture "file3" with non-zero noiseUV will be filtered with mipmap only. //
select -r ground ;

Starting diagnostics...

Known Problems/Limitations

Warnings

Speed/Memory Implications

- you have raytracing turned on.  Keep in mind that raytracing is
  inherently slow and the memory usage tends to be very large.
- the raytrace reflection limit is very high.  This can result
  very long rendering times, particularly with a high refraction
  limit and transparent surfaces.
- groundShape has a high tessellation count of at least 101250
  triangles. It will be worthwhile to reduce the tessellation amount.
- using Render->Set NURBS Tessellation[] can improve image quality
  and reduce render time by automatically setting the optimum
  tessellation based on distance from the camera. The tessellation
  can be computed for multiple surfaces across all frames in the
  animation.
- it can be useful to run your scene through "maya -optimizeRender"
  before rendering.  This can help optimize the scene for rendering.

Diagnostic Completed...

And the output window says this:

Automatic near/far clipping values: 0.1, 7268.51.
Constructing shading groups.
Rendering current frame.
Frame triangle count: 111594
====================================
Resource Usage At End Of Frame
====================================
78775 Page faults
112.945 Mb Max resident size
171.930 Mb Peak total size(Estimated)
125.698 Mb Peak arena size
====================================
131.328 Mb Current
21.875 Mb MEL
2.188 Mb Data Blocks
0.176 Mb Render Geometry Arena
2.500 Mb NURBS AG
1.779 Mb Pixel Map
0.375 Mb NURBS Surface Shapes
13.809 Mb File Texture Mipmaps
41.649 Mb Render Cache
0.125 Mb Keys
0.872 Mb Transforms
0.313 Mb NURBS Geometry Cache
====================================
Postprocessing rendering result.
Time For Tessellation (hh:mm:ss): 00:00:04
Time For Shadow Map (hh:mm:ss): 00:00:00
Time For Post Process (hh:mm:ss): 00:00:00
Time For Frame Render (hh:mm:ss): 00:00:15
Finished Rendering C:/Documents and Settings/Gregor/My Documents/maya/projects/OldHouse/images/testfly_perspShape_tmp.avi

---

I've only got a measley 256MB RAM, but I refuse to buy more because its RDRAM and costs

[gmask]

Definately sounds like you need more ram but one way you can make use of what you have is to render from the commandline and add these flags -tw 256 -th 256 these flags help the renderer work in a smaller amount of ram. A decent new system will cost at least a $1000 or more so why not just get the ram.. if you do buy a new system be sure to get at least a GB of ram

[jtk77]

256 megs of ram is below min requirments. When you turn off raytracing, does it work?

[xcomb]

Hi!
It happened to me several times when i tryed to render my geometry. The way i found to fix my problem is to export selected geometry and also don't forget to either bake your texture into file texture and export it too cuz when you export your geometry it will not export those shading groups u have assigned.
Anyhow i exported as obj depends if it's poly or nurbs.
another way is to export as dxf that will delete unused nodes. there is another otion in hypershade under Edit go to Delete unused nodes.
so hope that fixes but it did work for me
I doubt it's ram cuz i had 256 sdram and worked greate with that tutorial flying test. so if it does render and says rendering complete then it's not ram.
If it crashes and not to be able to finish rendering then most likely it's ram. I now have 1 gig of ddr wee happy me. Plus he said he was able to render it before with no problems so my best suggestion is to follow what i have posted, then create new scene, import all your exported geometry if nurbs export as dxf. After all recreate your lights shouldn't be that difficult and see the results.

[jtk77]

Well, usally in maya when you don't have enough ram it'll just toss the file and render black. It won't crash.

[g8keepr007]

I've loaded bigger projects and they render fine. I'll try exporting the objects to a new project like you suggested.

[g8keepr007]

When I load default lights the scene is lit, but when i load all lights there is no lighting in the scene. If I load each light individually then they work. Would this be whats causing the scene to render black?

[campbell]

are your lights visible?
if they are invisible (by non-drawingOveride/layer methods, just vanilla visbility on shape or transform), they wont light your scene on render.