Skip to main content
Frank Vitale
Frank Vitale
Known Participant
May 28, 2018
Question

Ray-traced 3d goes black

  • May 28, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 1611 views

Hi simple question hopefully.

When I set my comp 3d Renderer settings to 'Ray-traced 3d, any shapes I have in my scene and my scene in general just goes black.

I can still select my shape layer (simple rectangle in this case) but I cant see it and adding lights seems to have no effect.

If I go back to classic it works fine.

I've not used the Ray-traced setting yet... Am I just missing something?

Frank

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Roland Kahlenberg
Roland Kahlenberg
Legend
May 28, 2018

This is quite likely a Light(ing) issue - more precisely, a user-error. I suggest you apply an Ambient Light to the scene to see if your issue is resolved. If you can see your layers, adjust the Ambient Light's Intensity value and add other Light Types to embellish your scene, to suit your needs.

Very Advanced After Effects Training | Adaptive & Responsive Toolkits | Intelligent Design Assets (IDAs) | MoGraph Design System DEV
Frank Vitale
Frank VitaleAuthor
Known Participant
July 10, 2018

Roland I did investigate lighting, that was not it, it had something to do with my mac that I was working on. I moved the project to my pc and the problem was no more. It's just as well, my pc is faster but I would like to get to the bottom of it as my pc is not mobile so I cant do any ray-traced 3d work while out of the office.

Frank

R
Community Expert
Rick GerardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 10, 2018

CPU based Ray-traced rendering on a Mac running OSX 10.13.5 is broken in the latest release of AE. Unless you have a compatible NVIDIA GPU in your Mac (old MacBook Pro) you should be using the Cinema 4D rendering engine if you need those options. Ray-traced GPU rendering is no longer being worked on by the Adobe/Nvidia team so fixing this bug on the Mac is a pretty low priority.

Depending on what you are trying to do using C4D Lite may be a much better, faster rendering and more flexible option. If you are stuck needing to bend a layer or extrude text or shape layers in AE there are slight differences between the Ray-traced rendering and the C4D rendering, but you can work around most of the limitations. Personally, I have never used Ray-traced rendering for client work. I've just played around with it so I could understand how it works and see if it would be a useful and profitable tool for me to use in paid work. It has not been. I can get more done in less time using C4D lite and it renders in less than half the time.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices