Black/blank shader preview in Viewport

[Draise]

(Arnold Shaders mostly)

Here is my error - which I can't fix by modifying the shader, nor changing it's display issues - it only kind of fixes when I turn off the headlight or put it onto Texture decal.



But that is not useful for animation or previz. The viewport doesn't seem to hack many lights, but with only one or two Arnold lights it seems to work ok... why would that be? Is there a way around it?

I'm using an old demo version of Arnold, maybe it's because of that?

Just want some feedback!

[FXDude]

I know there is a limit of ogl lights displayed, the first I dont know exactly how many but.. definately more than 2

Is that always? or for that particular scene?

[Draise]

Well this has been generally always - well with these particular models. Regardless of scenes. Not sure what is up with that. But yeah, no biggie, might be annoying for when setting up lights, but that won't matter due to the render previews, but all good. I'm just happy I have a small work around. Probably should upgrade my videocard.

[luceric]

not a video card problem.

what does the shadertree for that object look like? XSI doesn't understand custom shaders. it tries to guess which shading and color to use in opengl for a default lambert shading setup using a logic I cannot recall.

[Hirazi Blue]

Could it be a case of inverted normals?

[Draise]

I wonder what that logic is! it would certainly be handy concerning visualization when animating so I'm a bit more clear as to know what I'm doing!

My shader tree has the Standard Arnold shader that goes into a Color Switch node with an Arnold AO node in the second slot - then the switch goes to the shader output. I use this to override in a partition - cause sometimes I want the AO on some alpha cutout cards with the bump maps calculated in the AO. Now mentioning bump maps, it's plugged directly into the shader output.

Thanks for the tips! I wouldn't fret too much about it right now, I'll keep on animating!