Why is my background image so bright?

I imported the Background Mesh from the Realistic Rendering project. I changed the image to my liking, however, the image is always putting off way too much light. The room its being used in has zero light. No Sky, No sun, no anything, yet the picture looks like its reflecting alot of sunlight. I think this has something to do with the emissive color.

Any ideas?

Hi VigeoJames,

I have assigned this to one of my teammates who may be able to help you further with your specific question on emissive materials. Thank you and have a great day!

Hi VigeoJames,

[You can find some relative information here about Emissive behavior that should help.][1]

Also, looking at your material you’ll want to change a few options to reflect the opacity of your material. The way it is setup now will not have any opacity to it. You can see the reference image I’ve included to help. :slight_smile:

In the material properties on the left you need to change blend mode to Translucent > then lighting model to Unlit. This will allow you to use the Opacity.

There are two things different about the way I’ve set up the material nodes in mine. For the Opacity I’m using a VectorConstant node to apply a value that I set rather than just using the alpha channel of the Texture Sample. This gives you much more control on the look and the opacity amount you would like to have.

Secondly, to control the brightness value of the TextureSample for the stars I’ve made a “ScalarParameter” that I labled “EmissiveBrightness” and given it a value of 1.0 (this is the full brightness that was present as if I just plugged it into the emissive pin.) Scaling the value beyond 1 will make it much brighter giving you some bloom. Scaling it below 1 will reduce its strength.

I hope this helps!
If you have any questions feel free to ask!

Thank you!

This worked! Thank you for your help.