One thing I noticed using the gem shaders is with the initial setup of the shader for the ruby, which I did in the above image a few posts back, my first renders were solid black. To fix this I made a 2048x2048 @ 300 dpi image of just the color color picked from an image of a cut ruby. I then applied it in the diffuse channel and highlight channel in the mat room. I also made the diffuse color from black to white.

My question is if I were to retry the shader as I did before I made the diffuse map. How would I get the model to render out the object at the color instead of pure black.

For my scene I had a heart jewel I made in wings3d. I used I13's IDL studio, Base for all around lighting. As for the lighting in the scene I am using a hard light setting which came in the Render Studio Bundle from RDNA.

Settings are

5 raytrace bounces

100 irradiance cache

idl quality 7

pixel samples 10

Shading rate .1

Forgive me if I don't post all the settings I have I am on my alt pc at the moment and won't be able to get to the better one for hours.

With the above settings it rendered black without the image map for the diffuse channel. Same with the sea horse image.

Would that be a lighting issue or a goof on my part setting up the scene.