I’ve commented out all the mesh geomtry and material code and left just the scene background code but the renderer isnt rendering
Okay i could get it to render by replacing the pre existing canvas with a document append element so now the question is why cant i render to a pre existing canvas
Most likely because you did not adhere to the documentation about WebGLRenderer. The 4th snapshot shows some code that looks problematic.
Also, once a canvas is used for 2D, it cannot be used for 3D.