When I create a motion path animation, during preview I see the same view and background color (white) I see in the layout. But after I save it to a *.wmv file when I play it back the background has changed to black thereby rendering most of the lines in the drawing not visible. Why is this happening and how can I fix it?I have already gone to Tools\Options and under the Display and Drafting tabs made sure that the color for uniform background is set to white. TIA.

Check both the render environment and the camera settings under the view command.  The camera view is the one to be more concerned with since that is what is going to be rendering the scene. Also check the visual style in the view motion path dialog box.kkrippene2008-06-10 22:17:53

Ok, I'll check those and see what happens. Thanks.

In the render environment I've made sure the color is white (with the fog both turned on and off). That didn't help.
 
In the motion path dialog box mostly I've kept it on 'As displayed'  but I've tried all the visual styles. It still shows a white background ONLY when playing the preview. But once I click OK and it saves it as a movie (either jpg or wmv), the backgrounds goes to black.
 
I was hoping to have this sorted out soon as my boss would like to use an animation in a presentation but not if it has the black background. Thanks for the try. If you've any other ideas...
 
 
 

under the view command, change the background to either solid or an image.  Then when you run the animation path, under display type choose one of the render settings i.e. low, medium, high or presentation.  This will use the camera background.  It will take a long time to render out, depending on how many lights and/or materials you have in your scene, but you should get the results you are looking for.

Ok, under the View command the View Manager pops up. I selected Model Views\Camera1 and set the background first to Image and clicked ok. I then set the display type to High. Didn't work. Went back and realized I hadn't given it an image to use.
So I went to an empty part of the drawing with white background and plotted it as PublishtoJPG and used that as the image. Didn't work. I tried setting background to Solid. Didn't work.
As I always work in the Layout1 tab I realized maybe it would be better to switch to the Model tab. I tried all the above actions again. This time it still didn't give me a white background but gray. So at least I've made some progress but still not there yet.
There are no materials being viewed, just contour lines describing various depressions in the ground which, in the animation, come out looking like solid faces.
What is it I'm not getting about this? TIA