In Cycles renderer, all your mats have to be set to use nodes. (Push that "use nodes" button next to the materials settings.) If you don't do that, then yeah, it's going to render white.

Also, nodes are pretty awesome for setting up procedural materials. You may not have all the texture sets of the internal renderer (still being developed), but shaders are rather decent once you figure them out. Also node layout is nice for figuring out what is going on as as far as how textures get generated and applied.

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Barbequed Pixels?

Your friendly neighborhood Wings3D nut.
Also feel free to browse my freebies at ShareCG.
There might be something worth downloading.