Ever hit the render button in Blender and your whole scene turns bright pink? Yeah… been there. Sometimes it’s just one object. Sometimes it’s everything!
In this video, Jamie walks you through what’s going on and how to fix it. He’ll also show you a couple of simple things you can do so it doesn’t happen again.
Super chill, beginner-friendly – nothing complicated.
Jamie Dunbar is the founder of Dragonboots Studios - a 3D animation company based in Australia. They predominantly work with the Texas Children's Hospital in America, creating educational animations to teach children about heart disease procedures.
Jamie has over 10 years of character design experience. He converted to Blender over three years ago and Dragonboots Studios now uses a combination of Maya and Blender.
This is such a common problem for people uploading to our render farm, cheers for making this! Will be sharing this video around any time someone needs help with their textures :)
That’s great Richard, I hope it helps. You work with BlenderGrid right? I haven’t tried that platform yet. Might have to give it a go on my next project :)
That’s most likely a missing HDRI. Check under your world settings if you have the “surface” set to “background”. If you do, make sure you have an image in the “colour” slot.
I just reset my startup setting to factory defaults and the pink has been replaced by a proper render. So my issues is apparently an issue with a change in the startup file. I’ll reply here again when I narrow it down to a particular offending configuration.
By the way, when I return to my former startup config, the pink returns. @Jamie, you were right: adding an HDRI image solved the issue of the pink universe. I still haven’t narrowed down which of my startup config changes caused it to break to begin with, but I’m still on the hunt for it and intend to report back.
This is such a common problem for people uploading to our render farm, cheers for making this! Will be sharing this video around any time someone needs help with their textures :)
That’s great Richard, I hope it helps. You work with BlenderGrid right? I haven’t tried that platform yet. Might have to give it a go on my next project :)
Thanks, yeah that’s correct, feel free to give it a try when you need some more render power :) At least you already know how to handle textures ;P
What if it’s a new blend file and the objects have no textures or shading applied? What causes the pink in this case?
As a concrete example, I select New > General, add a camera to the empty scene, and then hit F12 to render. Pink.
That’s most likely a missing HDRI. Check under your world settings if you have the “surface” set to “background”. If you do, make sure you have an image in the “colour” slot.
I just reset my startup setting to factory defaults and the pink has been replaced by a proper render. So my issues is apparently an issue with a change in the startup file. I’ll reply here again when I narrow it down to a particular offending configuration.
By the way, when I return to my former startup config, the pink returns. @Jamie, you were right: adding an HDRI image solved the issue of the pink universe. I still haven’t narrowed down which of my startup config changes caused it to break to begin with, but I’m still on the hunt for it and intend to report back.