Rendering Viewport turns everything black

[mattOC]

Greetings,

 

Working in VW 2017, I've been trying to render an architectural plan in a viewport and all results of the Renderworks kind come up all black.  The annotations are still legible , but no part of the plan is visible.

 

This happens with all phases of Renderwoks options, fast, final, interior, etc.  

 

Anyone know what causes this and if theres a work around?

 

Thanks,

Matthew

 

[PVA - Admin]

Thread continued here: 

 

[mattOC]

Thanks, seems like this thread leads to - turn it off and turn it on again.  I tried it, it worked, but clearly this isn't a permanent solution.

 

I hope that doesn't take away from my appreciation for you quick response which did in fact lead to a positive result.

 

thanks,

M

[Ornette]

I still have this problem from the upgrade to VW17 including the SP3 update. Needless to say it significantly devalues any reason for purchasing VW in the first place, or using it in a grown up commercial context. I am not impressed that my business is being used as an experiment for a permanent VW beta phase. Extremely unlikely that I will be renewing my subscription.

[PVA - Admin]

On 4/1/2017 at 3:03 AM, Ornette said:

I still have this problem from the upgrade to VW17 including the SP3 update. Needless to say it significantly devalues any reason for purchasing VW in the first place, or using it in a grown up commercial context. I am not impressed that my business is being used as an experiment for a permanent VW beta phase. Extremely unlikely that I will be renewing my subscription.

 

What happened after speaking with technical support directly? No resolution?

[Ornette]

Tech support have suggested that perhaps I have too many viewports, and that memory is likely to be an issue. What I do not understand is that the problems occurs with 'fast render works' and not with 'fine quality render works', so I am not sure if this is entirely a memory matter. Tech support have suggested 15-20 rendering viewports maximum.

[Kevin McAllister]

7 hours ago, Ornette said:

Tech support have suggested that perhaps I have too many viewports, and that memory is likely to be an issue. What I do not understand is that the problems occurs with 'fast render works' and not with 'fine quality render works', so I am not sure if this is entirely a memory matter. Tech support have suggested 15-20 rendering viewports maximum.

 

What system are you running VW on? I've had black viewports before, usually if I use the command "Update All Viewports". My understanding is that it happens when the render engine crashes. The workaround in my case was to render the viewports one at a time.

 

All of my projects have more than 20 viewports. One of my current project files has 92 viewports so I'd be surprised if the problem is directly related to the number of viewports. Suggesting a maximum of "15-20 rendered viewports maximum" is pretty impractical advice. I would try some other solutions -

• reducing the sheet layer dpi
• toggling "save viewport cache" off, resaving the file, and then toggling it back on again (found under File>Document Settings>Document Preferences>Display)
• deleting and recreating one of the problem viewports
• rebuilding a Renderworks style if you're using one.

Kevin

 

[Mike Lamb]

I have encountered something similar, where I will go thru a process of tweaking a viewport rendering, like changing a texture or light, then re-rendering to see the result.  Sometimes when I go back to the viewport and update it, instead of taking a minute or two to render, just a few seconds go by, and then a white or black viewport will appear and the rendering is done.

 

A workaround that I have found to get me out of this state without having to close and re-open the file is to change one of the renderworks settings.  For example, I usually render with custom renderworks, and I have found that changing the curved geometry setting will break it out of this cycle and my renderings will start working again.

 

Mike

[AD+B Studio]

has there been any resolution to this issue? I am having it and the restarting and deleting is not working What is odd is that OpenGL rendersfine it is just when ai render in a higher quality that the VP renders black.

 

[PVA - Admin]

OpenGL uses a different engine in the background, so very often issues with Renderworks will not occur in OpenGL at all, and vice versa. The issue has been acknowledged as a bug, but if you have steps that can reliable cause it to happen, that would be helpful. I have seen the issue here (I'd say it happens every 50-100 render attempts and then resolves with a restart) but I can not replicate it reliably.

[Jeremy Best]

On 6/14/2017 at 2:07 AM, JimW said:

The issue has been acknowledged as a bug, but if you have steps that can reliable cause it to happen, that would be helpful.

 

Hey@JimW. Just wondering, do you know whether or note a matrix is being used to track the commonalities between all users with this issue? Seeing as the cause is so elusive and the impact on affected users so gross, I thought this would be an effective way to narrow down potential causes. 

 

I currently have one user with these symptoms  -  2017 SP3, Windows 7, i7-6700, 16GB, NVIDIA Quadro K620 (2GB VRAM)  -  and I would love to help get this resolved. She said the issue is more likely to occur the longer a file has been open. 

Edited July 11, 2017 by Jeremy Best
prevalence of issue / scope of affected users, refined.

[zeno]

On 13/6/2017 at 4:03 PM, AD+B Studio said:

has there been any resolution to this issue? I am having it and the restarting and deleting is not working What is odd is that OpenGL rendersfine it is just when ai render in a higher quality that the VP renders black.

 

 

Sometimes i had the same issue. If you use a camera and try to render the viewport in OpenGL, everithing looks fine, but if you try to render it in another mode everithing get black.

if you convert the viewport into a camera by double cliking on the viewport, go inside the camera, try to check the real position of the camera in a plan view. Sometimes the point of view is in the middle of a wall component or in a object and when you try to render the scene everithing get black (not opengl).

 

[Adzm]

I am getting this issue every time I make a change to settings in the viewport. Even just a simple change results in a 3 sec render to black viewport.

Using fast exterior realistic render or Ozcad realistic exterior fast.

 

I am not in a wall or anything, this is becoming frustrating and time consuming.

 

Save the file close and re-open and it renders fine!

 

Any progress on this bug?

[zeno]

Try this: double click on viewport, go inside the “camera” mode, render the view in a quick mode, then come back to the viewport and retry to update it. i had the same problem and it works

[Michael Helms]

Yeah having the same problem.  I have tried every work around I can think of.  I have been a VW user for a long time.  Not impressed with this latest version.

Not considering getting 2018 until this issue gets ironed out.

[Genny]

I am on Vectorworks 2018 and just starting to have this problem. Has there been any fixes?

[zeno]

39 minutes ago, Genny said:

I am on Vectorworks 2018 and just starting to have this problem. Has there been any fixes?

 

Sometimes could be enough trying to regenerate the viewport

 

[PVA - Admin]

46 minutes ago, Genny said:

I am on Vectorworks 2018 and just starting to have this problem. Has there been any fixes?

If you are able to replicate this with a series of steps reliably, please let me know. This issue is still being tracked and we want as many examples as possible. For the time being, the only guaranteed fix seems to be restarting Vectorworks or closing/opening the file itself.

[chrisO325]

I deal with this issue at least a few times a week, and it never happens on the first render attempt after a program start.  I can pretty reliably get it to happen if I attempt to update quickly after cancelling a previous render.  (Particularly if I don't change anything in the OIP.)  Sometimes I'll have issues where certain Spotlight fixtures (particularly ones with gobos) won't show up at their labeled focus points properly; and whenever I fix those issues I almost always get a black viewport afterwards.  

 

If I edit the camera view after a black viewport render, I'll get exactly one properly-rendered viewport, and then anything after that just shows up black again until I re-edit a camera.  Also, I haven't had any luck with closing/opening the file - I've always had to fully restart Vectorworks to get rid of the problem.

 

Thanks for looking into this problem - if it's fixed, it'll be a massive help to my workflow.  Especially if it's connected to some of the problems I've experienced trying to render Spotlight fixtures/beams.

[frozenwaffles]

On 15/03/2018 at 4:01 AM, JimW said:

If you are able to replicate this with a series of steps reliably, please let me know. This issue is still being tracked and we want as many examples as possible. For the time being, the only guaranteed fix seems to be restarting Vectorworks or closing/opening the file itself.

Jim, thanks for your reply. I don't post a lot... but i have been using VW for about 6-7 years now. our company  owns 6 licenses too. we pay a lot of money for this software. to see this bug still roaming free and messing with peoples daily lives annoys the f%^k out of me. it frustrates the crap out of all my staff and causes much grief. its beyond a joke.

you really need to sort this out. VW 2017 and 2018 are complete dogs of software.

here are my steps to reproduce this on a daily level: click 'Update Viewport'.

[chrisO325]

What's happening more and more to me is that when I make small (3D and lighting) adjustments on my drawing, they'll show up fine in OpenGL, but if I render the scene the objects show up in their previous locations.  Which can be rather frustrating when I don't figure it out quickly.  (I'll keep making small adjustments to a light and think they aren't enough, only to realize that the render engine isn't working properly and the light is actually way too bright now.)

 

It's gotten to the point where I need to plan out an extra hour on each 4 to 8 hour project I do, just to allow time for all of the restarting and fighting with non-updating light objects and symbols.

[swcreative]

This is something I also struggle with a dozen+ times a day (6 core mac pro trashcan), it doesn't matter what project or the complexity of it.  I would say 95% of the time if I render a viewport in renderworks, then change the lighting setting on the viewport (IE change brightness from 35%-50%), the result will be it won't render and a couple seconds after pressing render it will just show a black viewport, and nothing can fix it unless you restart the app.  It is very annoying if I'm trying to render out multiple viewports for publishing and I've already rendered a few before this happens, as I then have to re-render the other viewports as well after restarting.  This happens in 2018 but used to happen to me in 2017 as well before I updated.

 

I have also had the issue that chris0325 describes, though less frequently than the other issue, I make changes to my drawing but rendering with renderworks shows the state of the drawing from earlier before changes were made.

 

Maybe a temporary fix for the Vectorworks team until they can sort this out fully would be to give us a menu option to restart the Cinema4D renderer in the background without requiring us to shutdown Vectorworks.  I've tried force quitting it in activity monitor but it doesn't restart up, then Vectorworks doesn't even attempt to do any rendering after it has been force quit.

[PVA - Admin]

1 minute ago, swcreative said:

Maybe a temporary fix for the Vectorworks team until they can sort this out fully would be to give us a menu option to restart the Cinema4D renderer in the background without requiring us to shutdown Vectorworks.  I've tried force quitting it in activity monitor but it doesn't restart up, then Vectorworks doesn't even attempt to do any rendering after it has been force quit.

We tried something like this initially, but the script to reset it caused this same problem to occur even if it hadn't already. Restarting the application has been the only reliable workaround I have found to work every time.

[Christiaan]

My workaround is to duplicate the viewport and delete the old one. Pretty sure this works every time.

[Andy Broomell]

On 6/25/2018 at 1:10 PM, swcreative said:

It is very annoying if I'm trying to render out multiple viewports for publishing and I've already rendered a few before this happens, as I then have to re-render the other viewports as well after restarting.

 

Make sure under documents settings that "Save Viewport Cache" is turned on. You shouldn't have to re-update other viewports after restarting.

 

 

On 6/26/2018 at 3:31 AM, Christiaan said:

My workaround is to duplicate the viewport and delete the old one. Pretty sure this works every time.

 

For me this works about 50% of the time.