Why your 3D model renders black
If adding light does not help, the model is probably black already: its base colour is near zero, so there is nothing for light to bounce off. Change the material instead of adding lamps.
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How to do it
- Turn the key light up. If the model brightens, it was simply underlit and you are done.
- If it stays black, open Object and apply a material preset. A near-black base colour reflects almost nothing however bright the light.
- Black on one side only? Those faces have flipped normals, so they are lit from the inside. Re-export the model with normals recalculated.
- If a textured model is black, the texture probably did not come with it. An
.objneeds its.mtland image files selected at the same time.
This is the most common thing that goes wrong with an imported model, and the instinct is always to add more light. That rarely works, because the three causes look identical on screen and only one of them is a lighting problem. A black base colour absorbs almost all the light it receives, so doubling the brightness doubles almost nothing. Flipped normals point a surface away from the camera, so it is lit from behind. A missing texture leaves the renderer with no colour information at all.
Good to know: Dark products are genuinely hard to light, in a studio as much as in 3D. The answer is usually not more light but a brighter environment behind the camera, so the surface has something to reflect and its edges separate from the background.
Questions
I turned every light up and it is still black.
Then it is the material, not the light. Apply a material preset and the model will take light normally.
Only part of the model is black.
Those faces have flipped normals. Recalculate normals wherever you exported the model from.
My OBJ lost all its colours.
Select the .obj, its .mtl and the texture images together when importing. On its own an OBJ carries geometry but no materials.