Renderworks and OpenGL produce black backgrounds on one machine, render fine on my computer

[Stephan Moenninghoff 386]

Here are two viewports rendered with OpenGL (top) and Renderworks (bottom) on a client machine (left) and the same viewports rendered on my computer (right). The client is quite desperate because he is getting these black backgrounds in both OpenGL and Renderworks intermittently. He is also seeing white (RGB 255,255,255) areas in rendered images turning black on his computers but nobody is able to reproduce the behaviour anywhere else.

Any ideas? Thanks!

[David S 182]

 

Could be any of the following as above Stephan: all worth trying. It's likely his settings are not the same as yours?

so:-

update driver

set the VW preferences to good performance

check the driver is pointing at VW not an internal graphics card

and the "if all else fails" option....

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 15, 2018 by David S

[Bas Vellekoop 177]

Removing or renaming the preference folder of Vectorworks fixes this problem:

 

C:\Users\.....\AppData\Roaming\Nemetschek\Vectorworks     >     remove or rename '2019' folder

 

This is not the greatest solutions because you have to redo all the personal settings, so another solution would be very welcome.

[David S 182]

Yes. That's my all else fails option!

[Stephan Moenninghoff 386]

Thank you @David Sand @Bas Vellekoop. Bas' suggestion solved the problem so thanks for saving my day! Yes, deleting the user folder is kind of brute force and should be done with care. I have restored the customer's workspace and everything seems fine now.

[Stephan Moenninghoff 386]

Today everything is back to what it was before. So, again, the user folder must be reset to fix the black renders. I wonder what brings this about. Is there anything the customer might be doing, that provokes this behaviour?

[line-weight 770]

I think this is just another instance of the long-running 'black render' problem that has remained unfixed over several releases including 2019?

 

 

Sometimes I experience the situation where the whole render goes black, sometimes more like what is described above where portions render as black. When it's just portions that render black, it often seems to be reflective (or transparent?) surfaces that are involved. I'll sometimes see it with windows, sometimes where I have a body of water. Solutions include if you are lucky, simply duplicating and re-rendering the viewport, or if you are less lucky, a requirement to completely reboot VW each time it happens.

Edited November 19, 2018 by line-weight

[Bas Vellekoop 177]

9 minutes ago, line-weight said:

I think this is just another instance of the long-running 'black render' problem that has remained unfixed over several releases including 2019?

 

 

Sometimes I experience the situation where the whole render goes black, sometimes more like what is described above where portions render as black. When it's just portions that render black, it often seems to be reflective (or transparent?) surfaces that are involved. I'll sometimes see it with windows, sometimes where I have a body of water. Solutions include if you are lucky, simply duplicating and re-rendering the viewport, or if you are less lucky, a requirement to completely reboot VW each time it happens.

IMO i do not think this is the same thing, it this is a very persistent problem.

A restart does not fix it and it is visible in the resourse browser as well.

[line-weight 770]

9 minutes ago, Bas Vellekoop said:

it is visible in the resourse browser as well.

 

Not quite sure what you mean by this?

[Bas Vellekoop 177]

Just now, line-weight said:

 

Not quite sure what you mean by this?

 

Sorry about that 🙂

If you add a symbol to the RB and it is set to Opengl it gets a black background as well.

It happens to everything that is rendered Opengl mode

 

 

[line-weight 770]

Ah, I see.

 

Yes, perhaps it is not a related problem.

 

Looking again closely at the render in the OP, I can see that the 'black' window has some reflections in it, which is a bit different to the ongoing problem where the window would come out as a flat black area.

[Stephan Moenninghoff 386]

28 minutes ago, Bas Vellekoop said:

IMO i do not think this is the same thing, it this is a very persistent problem.

A restart does not fix it and it is visible in the resourse browser as well.

 Confirmed. The Resource Manager previews also show the black backgrounds. Once edited on a different machine, they return to normal.

[David S 182]

@Stephan Moenninghoff

Did your client also attempt any of the below as well?

 

Could be any of the following as above Stephan: all worth trying. It's likely his settings are not the same as yours?

so:-

update driver

set the VW preferences to good performance

check the driver is pointing at VW not an internal graphics card

[Stephan Moenninghoff 386]

4 hours ago, David S said:

update driver

set the VW preferences to good performance

check the driver is pointing at VW not an internal graphics card

Oh, yes, sorry, forgot to mention that. Those are the first things we check. Thanks!

Edited November 19, 2018 by Stephan Moenninghoff

[Gunther 359]

We're finding the black background appearing in some viewports and Resource Manager thumbnails are caused by the, "Default Compression" option on the Edit tab of the Vectorworks Preferences being set to JPEG, instead of the default, PNG.

[Stephan Moenninghoff 386]

Just now, Gunther said:

We're finding the black background appearing in some viewports and Resource Manager thumbnails are caused by the, "Default Compression" option on the Edit tab of the Vectorworks Preferences being set to JPEG, instead of the default, PNG.

 Thanks, @Gunther this may help until the issue is resolved!

[Mellovici 0]

On 12/18/2018 at 5:13 PM, Stephan Moenninghoff said:

 Thanks, @Gunther this may help until the issue is resolved!

There is no issue it think,

 

It is quite logic.

 

Jpeg format does not support an transparant background. PNG does tough.

 

That the background of JPEG is black is quite odd.