Distant Light causes my models to be black

ForestBoy

Hello!

I have a Distant Light in my scene.

When it light is present, the textures in my scene appear black.

No matter which rendering mode I have selected ("Texture Shaded", "Wire Shaded", etc.), the textures stay black.

Only if I render, the come back as intended.

When I delete this light, it all appears "normal" again.

 

What is this behaviour of the light, and how could I change this?

Thank you!

 

thd777

Adding a light source (like the distant light) shuts off the camera light. You can reenable it in the camera parameters (switch from Auto to on) or by using ctrl—L. Make sure to switch the light off before rendering otherwise the lighting will be off. 

Ciao

TD

JonnyRay

You should normally keep the camera's headlamp turned off all the time unless you need it for a specific look. But when looking through the Perspective view, this isn't the root cause.

Ctrl-L turns off previewing the lights, it doesn't affect the camera headlamp. It's the best way to work when you're setting up a scene and the lights aren't working well in one of the Shaded viewing modes. You can always switch to the Iray preview to see how the actual lighting is working for your scene.

FYI, the root cause is the limit of lighting that the OpenGL previews can support. That's why it will suddenly turn black in certain situations. It isn't necessarily the distant light that's causing it, it can also happen with spotlights and point lights.

Richard Haseltine

JonnyRay said:

You should normally keep the camera's headlamp turned off all the time unless you need it for a specific look. But when looking through the Perspective view, this isn't the root cause.

You can just turn the Headlamp off in the General group in the Editor tab of Render Settings.

JonnyRay said:

Ctrl-L turns off previewing the lights, it doesn't affect the camera headlamp. It's the best way to work when you're setting up a scene and the lights aren't working well in one of the Shaded viewing modes. You can always switch to the Iray preview to see how the actual lighting is working for your scene.

FYI, the root cause is the limit of lighting that the OpenGL previews can support. That's why it will suddenly turn black in certain situations. It isn't necessarily the distant light that's causing it, it can also happen with spotlights and point lights.