topic Re: Black Render ! in Visualization

Black Render !

Anonymous — Thu, 11 May 2023 09:35:37 GMT

Hello everybody !

I have trouble rendering with Cinerender. Since yesterday, all the renders have come out completely black, with no sky above. You can see in the attachment what it looks like.

I've been working with Archicad since 2016, using it to produce high quality interior and exterior renders, and I've never encountered this kind of problems before. I'm sure that I haven't changed any parameter or whatsoever on my computer before the problem occured.

In order to solve the problem, I tried updating my graphic card driver, changing the rendering scene, lowering the render's screen size and quality, removing all the furniture in the 3D ... Nothing worked.

I'm using ArchiCad 22. These are the infomation related to my system :
* Win7
*Processor: Intel(R) Core (TM) i7-6500U CPU @2.50GHz
*Memory RAM: 12.0GB

I read all the previous questions related to similar issues on this forum, but still nothing worked for me.

CAN ANYBODY PLEASE HELP ME?

Re: Black Render !

Carstenem — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 21:25:45 GMT

That certainly is strange, I suggest you do a new & reset in ARCHICAD draw a slab and a cube and hit render. If it is still black , then at least you know it has nothing to do with your project file.

Carsten

Re: Black Render !

Barry Kelly — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:22:30 GMT

Also try using different preset render settings rather than 'custom' that you show in your image.

Barry.

Re: Black Render !

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 14:42:53 GMT

Carstenem wrote:
That certainly is strange, I suggest you do a new & reset in ARCHICAD draw a slab and a cube and hit render. If it is still black , then at least you know it has nothing to do with your project file.

Carsten

Hello, thank you for answering !

I followed your advice, but I'm still facing the same problem. So, like you said, the problem has nothing to do with my project file.

Can you please tell me what can possibly be the cause behind this ?

Re: Black Render !

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 14:44:40 GMT

Barry wrote:
Also try using different preset render settings rather than 'custom' that you show in your image.

Barry.

Thanks for the answer, but even after doing that, I'm still getting the same black result.

Re: Black Render !

Carstenem — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 20:58:18 GMT

my next step would be to re install AC.

Re: Black Render !

Minh Nguyen — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 21:48:22 GMT

Hi,

Thank you for sharing the issue, and for those who have contributed to diagnosing the issue, thank you very much!

At first, my hunch went to hardware/OS issues, as the issue happened only recently. I am wondering if there is any recent update to the graphics card/OS that was made on the computer?

I can manage to reproduce the issue by carrying out either of these 2 tests:
- Set the sun intensity to 0 in PhotoRendering settings dialog (as can be seen in the screenshot below): that may not be the case here, but it may worth a look.

- Corrupt the texture of all materials: there might be different reasons to why it is corrupted. If this is the case, I think a reinstallation can eliminate the issue.

Other than these, I cannot think of other possible reasons. Let me know if the above suggestions help. By the way, we just released update 7000 for ARCHICAD 22. If you decide to reinstall ARCHICAD, I would strongly advise upgrading to the latest build to benefit from the latest update.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Best regards,
Minh

Re: Black Render !

Anonymous — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 22:37:45 GMT

I would like to thank all the kind persons that took the time to answer me.

First, I should mention that I made no hardware changes before the problem first occured. But after it happened, I thought of updating my graphic card drivers (with the AMD Radeon software). I must say that I've been experiencing some trouble in the display and manipulation of the 3D after the graphic update. But that's another issue.

Second, I checked the sun intensity in the rendering settings. I shows a value of 100 (and not 0). So the problem is not caused by that parameter.

Third, I tried reinstalling Archicad as you advised me. This time I had a different result !
So now I'm able to visualise a well-rendered preview (which is positive change ! ). However, soon after launching the render, it automatically stops during the calculating phase. I repeated the operation several times during the day, and the same problem occured each time. You can see how it looks like in the screenshots.

It might sound silly, but do you think it has to do with the age of the pc ? (I've been using it since the end of 2016).

Again, thank you very much for your kind replies.
Best regards.

Salomé.

Re: Black Render !

Lingwisyer — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 01:21:09 GMT

If you render a smaller section, does it still stop?

Re: Black Render !

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 02:21:19 GMT

Salomé,

I would say that your PC is probably not up to the task of photo rendering as you have insufficient RAM and a reasonably old slow processor.

If you use one of the fast exterior rendering setting presets set to a low resolution (640x480 pixels) does the image render, if so it is definitely your hardware that is not up to the task.

I had renders that where taking many hours (24hrs +) to process on an older PC be completed in under an hour on a newer PC with more RAM. Rendering is very memory intensive as it needs to load the model, lights, textures, radiosity solution etc in memory to process if you don’t have enough ram the computer will attempt to use your hard drive as memory but this is thousands of times slower than ram.

Best of luck
Scott

Re: Black Render !

Minh Nguyen — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 06:18:34 GMT

Hi Salomé,

As Scott and Ling suggested, something might block the rendering process from working. Before starting the render, please open Task Manager, and locate to Details tab. Look for process named “CineRenderNEM”, and notice how much memory it takes when you start rendering.

If the RAM memory is not enough to run the render, the process may stop midway.

If you see that you still have enough memory, but CineRenderNEM process stops taking memory while rendering (or even disappear), it means something is blocking it. I see you have an Anti-virus program, maybe that’s what stops the process.

Let me know if the above suggestions help!

Best regards,
Minh

Re: Black Render !

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 12:33:15 GMT

Hello everybody, thank you for helping me in resolving this issue.

As Scott suggested, I tried using the fast exterior rendering setting presets set to a low resolution (640x480 pixels). The render eventually worked, and I got a very low resolution picture. What is problematic is that whenever I try using a higher rendering preset (for exemple the medium exterior, along with a 600x800-pixel-resolution) it stops during the calculating process. I must mention though, that I had one single successful attempt ! Unfortunately, soon after the render was finished, the problem started again, and all the next rendering stopped midway.

I also considered Minh's suggestion about the antivirus blocking the RAM usage for Cinerender. That's why I thought of temporarely disabling the Antivirus and observing the RAM usage in the Task Manager. It did not resolve the problem, though. I attached two screenshots, so can you please see them and tell me what you understood?

So far, what I suspect the most is that my PC is getting old, so my hardware is not up to the task anymore. It is strange, though, that it was perfectly working the last time I used it to render. (That must be about one month ago).

Again, thank you very much !

Best regards,
Salomé.

Re: Black Render !

Minh Nguyen — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 14:46:11 GMT

Hi Salomé,

Thank you for the tests!

The fact that it managed to make at least one successful render makes things a lot more complicated. At least it still has the capability to render one picture!

I also notice that there is a tick on the first "black" render, meaning ARCHICAD registers it as successful, although in reality, we know that it's not!

The only thing I can suggest now is to create another user account on your machine, and attempt to make a render using a different file as well to see if it works.

If that doesn't help, I can't think of any further suggestions! Let me know how the test goes!

Thank you very much!

Best regards,
Minh

Re: Black Render !

Barry Kelly — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 00:58:44 GMT

How much free space do you have on your hard drive?
You probably had a little more a month ago when it worked.
If space is running low then try to delete unwanted data - don't forget to empty the recycle bin as well.

Also turn of all another running applications if you can as they will be sharing the RAM.

I have similar specs to you but slightly more RAM.
I don't do a lot of renders but I have not had any problems.

Barry.

Re: Black Render !

Lingwisyer — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 01:21:32 GMT

You say you are on Win7. Is that 32 bit or 64 bit? If it is 32 bit, you will not be able to increase your RAM usage much more than it currently is at.

Ling.

Re: Black Render !

Barry Kelly — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 02:30:57 GMT

Lingwisyer wrote:
You say you are on Win7. Is that 32 bit or 64 bit? If it is 32 bit, you will not be able to increase your RAM usage much more than it currently is at.

It would have to be 64 bit to run Archicad.
I think it has been that way since about version 21? (don't quote me on that).

Also versions 22 and 23 have not been tested on WIN7.
I had no problem with 22 but 23 displayed the occasional error.
I don't think it will have any effect on the rendering but who knows?

I just upgraded my laptop from WIN 7 to 10 and all has been good so far.

Barry.

Re: Black Render !

Lingwisyer — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 02:55:50 GMT

Barry wrote:
It would have to be 64 bit to run Archicad.
I think it has been that way since about version 21? (don't quote me on that).

Since AC17 apparently.