Question

So I am trying to store the result from a render target into an array of Colors so I can manipulate them individually with an iterator. For some reason, the below code sets every value in the array to R=0, G=0, B=0, A=0. As though it was never initialized. Is the GetData method used incorrectly? Is it something else? It should be a very colorful image, and definitely not transparent.

The issue is NOT that the textures are not drawing properly, I executed the code with no set render target (using the default backbuffer) and the game ran perfectly fine.

            //Creating a new render target and setting it
        RenderTarget2D unprocessed = new RenderTarget2D(graphics.GraphicsDevice, Window.ClientBounds.Width, Window.ClientBounds.Height,false,SurfaceFormat.Color,DepthFormat.Depth24,4,RenderTargetUsage.PreserveContents);
        graphics.GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(unprocessed);

        //Drawing background and main player
        spriteBatch.Draw(bgTex,new Rectangle(0,0,Window.ClientBounds.Width,Window.ClientBounds.Height),Color.White);
        mainPlayer.Draw(spriteBatch);

        //resetting render target
        graphics.GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(null);

        //creating array of Color to copy render to
        Color[] baseImage = new Color[Window.ClientBounds.Width * Window.ClientBounds.Height];
        //I pause the program here and baseImage is an array of black transparent colors
        unprocessed.GetData<Color>(baseImage);

        spriteBatch.End();

Answer 1

I believe there are a couple of problems. The first of which is that you need to call spriteBatch.End() prior to acessing the render target. I also just noticed there is no call to spriteBatch.Begin().

RenderTarget2D unprocessed = new RenderTarget2D( /*...*/);
graphics.GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(unprocessed);
graphics.GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.Black);

//Drawing
spriteBatch.Begin();
spriteBatch.Draw(/*...*/);
spriteBatch.End();

//Getting
graphics.GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(null);

You just answered your own question so…. Nevermind then.