Black Render !

[Anonymous]

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?

[Minh Nguyen]

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

[Anonymous]

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.

[Minh Nguyen]

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

[Barry Kelly]

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.

[Lingwisyer]

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.

[Barry Kelly]

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.

[Lingwisyer]

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.