Where is the light pass color buffer type in houdini 11?
In 10 it was prefernce-3d viewport.
the objects created show black not a light gray

It is now lumped together with a few other framebuffers in the “HDR Rendering” option, Effects tab. Which platform, graphics card & driver do you have?

Edit: Are there any warnings/errors in the Display Options info popup? (icon button, lower right corner)

I have a m90 dell laptop with a nvidia 3500m video card.yes i did get a warning window when h 11 is starting up. i have since posting added the latest video drivers which also does not fix the object being in black.Odforce members said they have contacted nividia for a fix.
Are these all related?

If you have Houdini 11 build 458 or higher, the issue with the Nvidia 256+ drivers has been worked around by unrolling the lighting loop in the GLSL shader. The original issue is still under review by Nvidia, but it shouldn't affect new builds.