The View.render() method has to be called at least twice to render a static object in the 3 dimensional space.  Is this by design?

See: “A static object of Away3D TypeScript is not displayed”

Is your intent to just simply render a static 3D scene, and then stop animation since there is no movement or change?

If this is the case, I had tried for a few days to capture the bitmap data to convert it to a .jpg without success. If you figure it out, let me know how!

As for your specific question, yes, only one rendered frame is not sufficient for producing the scene on screen.

However, I do not know the reasoning for this.

For a simple tutorial on how to start and stop animation.
http://blog.grokdd.com/tutorial-away3d-typescript-start-on-mouse-over/

For other Away3d TS tutorials visit.
http://blog.grokdd.com/away3d-typescript/