Beginner- Nothing appears with renderworks

[breathesrain]

Hi, I'm pretty much a complete beginner to Vectorworks in general, so bear with me. I'm making a light plot, and as part of a presentation I want to create a few different 3-D renderings of the theatre, angle-color visualizations, that kind of thing. My problem is that whenever I use Rendorworks, everything turns white. I can't see any objects at all, though I can still place them. This problem doesn't occur with openGL or using a wireframe model, just with both final and fast quality renderworks. I think the layers could be messed up somehow, but I've moved pretty much everything to different levels and nothing changed. Changing the level/class of the rendering doesn't seem to work, either. I'm a bit stressed out, because I need the rendered images by Thursday afternoon...

I cannot attach the file at the moment, but I will in an hour or so, if necessary. My heartfelt thanks for any help!

[bc]

Sounds like you have too many lights or they are too bright or your ambient light is too bright.

You might post you system specs and version number in your signature and then the cognizenti (not necessarily myself) will be better able to help you out.

[JeffPPI]

Can you still click the objects? If you can, and they become highlighted, then you do have too many lights all on at once.

If you have the "Lit Fog" box clicked in the OIP, turn it off and see what happens.

If you've put the lights in different classes, turn the classes off and try rendering again. This will confirm the "too many lights" theory.

If you've got a couple hours to spare, try running a radiosity or FQ Radiosity. This usually takes my computer a while to finish, but renders lighting very accurately.

Did you put side walls on your theater? if you're just using keyboard shortcuts to view FQRW and FRW, then you'll just be looking at the sides, front, back, etc. of your building.

Try using a renderworks camera.

I've also found that it helps (but not necessary) if everything is on the same design layer.

good luck!

Edited March 25, 2010 by JeffPPI