Pink or black textures in your Blender project

Pink or black textures in your Blender project

If one or several textures in your render appear pink, it means that the respective textures couldn't be loaded by Blender when rendering your file. This is a situation can be fixed in 100% of cases, and here are some steps that will help in debugging the problem:
1. Are the missing textures in PSD format? If yes, you will need to use another format for them to work on RenderStreet. The reason behind this is that we use Linux for our servers, and Blender doesn't support PSD textures in Linux. Just save the files with a different format, update the blend file and reupload.

2. Make sure the texture files are referenced with the exact name as the file. Our systems are case-sensitive, so 'MyTexture.png' is not the same as 'mytexture.png'

3. Check that the all the projects assets are contained in a single folder (subfolders are allowed). In this folder, the main .blend file needs to be situated in the folder root and the rest of the assets (libraries, textures, etc) can be either at the same level or in subfolders of the main folder. If you are using FTP to upload the files, please place the project inside a folder, and not in the FTP root.

For instance, this structure is a correct one:

FTP root 
         My-project-folder
                        blend-file-1.blend
                        textures-folder
                        libraries-folder              
                        texture1.jpg

This structure is incorrect, as the textures folder is outside the folder containing the main .blend file:

           My-project-folder
                        blend-file-1.blend
                        libraries-folder              
            textures-folder

  This structure is incorrect, as the main .blend file is in the FTP root folder:

  FTP root   
          blend-file-1.blend
          libraries-folder              
          textures-folder

4. Render the same file that you uploaded to RenderStreet, on your own computer (with low res/low samples, to make it fast). If the textures are looking pink in that render as well, it means that some files are missing. Try locating the files and update the paths in the .blend files with the correct values. Then test again on your computer and reupload the file on RenderStreet.
Tip: Always use relative paths, otherwise the files may have problems rendering on other systems, including on our servers

5. If possible, render the same file on another computer in your home/office. This helps detect the situation in which the files are present on your computer, but they are referenced with absolute paths or have not been included in the package sent to RenderStreet. Moving the package on another computer will cause all missing files to be visible at rendering.
Tip: Blender has a function for displaying the missing files, which may be helpful for debugging pink textures. You can find it in the menu, at File->External Data->Report missing files. You can see the full output of the function in the system console (Window->Toggle system console)

6. If you uploaded a manually packed file, check that you followed the correct packing procedure before uploading it to our farm. Check this article for guidelines about packing, and note the packing exceptions in the article - like, for instance, the image sequence textures that are not packed and need to be uploaded along with the file.

Another option would be using our plugin, which collects all the assets in the project and uploads them to our servers.

If you are noticing black textures in your render, it's possible these are caused by a bug in Blender that will sometimes not render properly a combination of UV map and noise texture. If you try to render a texture with UV mapping and noise texture, but there is no UV map, sometimes it will render black. 

Still in trouble? Contact us and we'll help. Please note that we may need to look at your file in order to debug it, if the log files don't provide enough information. If that will be the case, we'll ask for your permission first.

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