Thanks Dave!

Yes, I have a couple of directional lights, and one ambiant light.

In the picture is the initial model, just fine, and smoothed one, black.

Now, If I do something as simple as cutting one single face with split polygon tool, the model goes black in ytthe viewports, and renders black as well, or rather texture-less.

This is not a texture issue, as the texture works fine on other models, and the model reacts the same with dfferent textures.

Now why render with Hardware Maya? Not sure - in the end I am aiming at a movie, so a series of IFF images that I would like to be of good quality...

Any advices?