Preview window flat - n00b question

[jgwinner]

I have a very simple scene with a World Machine landscape imported.  No shading yet.

The preview window is completly flat, although the overhead view shows the height shaded terrain.

When I render, everything looks fine.

This makes it nearly impossible to position the camera properly; I have to move it, render, move it, render.

The terrain node is really simple,  the Heightfield Shader 01 then a Heightfield load 01 underneath that. I used a .ter file and it's working as the rendering is fine, but the preview is flat - but does show the bounding box.

The object display mode is "Show as wireframes".

Steps to reproduce were create a new file (with the Preview), load the terrain as "height field load", then move the camera and render.

== John ==

[Matt]

Hi John,

Could you show us a screenshot, along with a render of what it's supposed to look like?

Matt

[Matt]

I guess it could be that the 3D Preview is not looking through the render camera. If you press the Reset button at the top of the 3D Preview (or press the 'R' key) it should return to the current render camera. There are other ways to do this too, but that's the simplest. Remember that if you move the view in the 3D Preview it doesn't automatically update the render camera. To make the render camera up to date you should press the "Set Camera" button at the bottom left of the 3D Preview; this is the button with the tooltip that says "Copy this view to the current render camera."

Matt

[jgwinner]

Hmm ... might have been a leak in the O/S or some video card problem.  I rebooted and everything looks fine now.

I'm attaching what it did look like, the render, and what it looks like now.  No changes other than the reboot.

What was really weird, is everything looked fine except the preview window.

No errors or anything though.

So, I think you can ignore this!

== John ==

[Matt]

It looks like the preview was in "Pick Focus Point" mode (see the text at the top) so it was expecting you to click somewhere before it updated anything. So I don't think you have to worry about the video card or anything like that.

Matt

[jgwinner]

I tried it with 'pick focus mode' later and everything looked fine.  So I really think it was a video bug, will try to reproduce it.

I tend to have a LOT of open email messages and web pages, and don't reboot very often - after a while the O/S gets funny - bitmaps on web pages won't open and other rendering errors.  This is with NVidia OR ATI, so I think it's an O/S bug.  Checking the performance tab and showing handles doesn't show the leak - not quite sure what the problem is.

Now I've got a problem with WM terrain and bitmaps not lining up - but I'll repost on another thread after I double check a few things.  Missed the road contest as a result  

Start early, render often <= contest mantra, lol.

== John ==

[Matt]

When it's in Pick Focus Point mode, it doesn't update the micropolygons until you click somewhere to choose the focus point. While it's waiting, you can still navigate around and it produces the same kind of image you got, where the polygons in the view were generated from an old viewpoint. Your screenshot looked like a healthy preview to me, just waiting for you to click in it, then it would have updated.

Matt

[bla bla 2]

Add the resize.