Node Editor

[mojofilters]

Greetings to the community. I'm new here but have been toying with LW since I purchased a student license for v7.5. I recently upgraded to full v9 and discovered the Node Editor while viewing a tutorial movie on anisotropic specular shading. I have a project that contains a DVD and this shading technique looked like a great alternitive to the animated texturing I was planning on doing. I did a little experimenting after viewing the tutorial a couple of times and everything worked great. I'll even go so far as to say I was excited! BUT... when I opened my scene and tried to apply the same effect to my DVD things got crazy. I'll start with the most basic of problems and perhaps everything else will fall into place after I resolve it. When I select my DVD surface and open the Node Editor the preview is a black sphere with two small white dots. It looks nothing like the typical shading preview sphere. It ALMOST looks like a double sided semi-transparent sphere. When I add an anisotropic node it's preview is only a black sphere... and it has no effect on the surface. I've spent hours over the past few days trying to figure out whats going on... delete this, unparent that, etc etc etc I even made a copy of the scene and deleted everything except the DVD, one light, and the camera... same results.

With hat in hand I come before the alter of knowledge and experience and ask if someone might help me resolve this issue before I go completely insane.

mojofilters

[Sensei]

So what is the problem? Black preview in Node Editor? How about render?

Did you make sure that you have turned ray-tracing and reflections on in Global Render options window?

[Silkrooster]

Welcome aboard I sure someone will solve your issues. Best thing to do however it to do a screen grab and post that rather than trying to decribe what it looks like. I think you will find it way more productive.

With that said I beleive Sensei is correct, To view the textures in Viper, you have to:
1) have viper enabled (usually enabled once viper window is open)
2) have viper window open (both steps 1 and 2 are accomplished on the render tab)
3) do a render after the first 2 steps have been done.
4) now change settings in the nodel panel.

If you are refering to something other than viper, then we will need to see a screen shot.
Silk

[mojofilters]

Problem resolved. thanks for the replies but the issue was a bit more complicated than simply not knowing how to render a scene.

Thanks again

mojofilters

[Silkrooster]

Glad you got it solved.
Silk