VTK Rendering Shows Black Screen – Any Solutions?

Development
1

Hi everyone,

I am facing an issue where my VTK-based application is rendering only a black screen instead of displaying the expected 3D visualization. I am using VTK with Python/C++ and OpenGL,and everything was working fine until I upgraded to a newer version.

Now, when I try to render a scene, the window appears but stays completely black. The application does not crash, and no error messages are displayed in the console.

System & Setup Details:

Programming Language: Python / C++
Graphics API: OpenGL
Operating System: Windows 11 / Linux Ubuntu 22.04
Issue Behavior:
The window opens, but only a black screen is shown.
No rendering errors appear in the log.
Tried resetting the camera and checking light sources, but no effect.
Other OpenGL applications work fine.

Could this be related to missing shaders, graphics driver compatibility, or a rendering pipeline issue?

Has anyone else faced a similar problem? Any insights or debugging tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

2

A black screen can happen due to a number of reasons. Are you able to reproduce the issue with a smaller python example?

Try completely turning off lighting with actor->GetProperty()->LightingOff(). Also check the bounds returned by renderer->ComputeVisiblePropBounds(double [6]) to verify your props are in the viewport.

3

@cowem To rule out any graphics/driver/camera issues, a simple trick is to set the renderer background color to something other than black. renderer.SetBackground(1, 0, 0) would set it to red. If you still see a black window, it is likely a graphics/driver issue.

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