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How would I go about increasing the strength/distance of an Emission texture without the texture getting brighter in Blender Cycles?

Lets say I take the following texture and make a light mask out of it. I then mix them equally with the Texture as a Diffuse BSDF and the Mask as an Emission.

How the textures are mixed

With the Strength set as 1.000 the texture looks ok but I feel it just isn't bright enough. But if I set it to something higher (like 100.000) the texture gets oversaturated.

Left image where the strength is 1.000. Right image where the strength is 100.000

Is there some way I can have the light emit to infinity if I so pleased, yet have the texture remain the same brightness in Cycles?

Edward
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  • related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/43248/make-the-flame-of-a-candle-more-yellow/43387 and http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/46825/render-with-a-wider-dynamic-range-in-cycles-to-produce-photorealistic-looking-im –  Jan 07 '17 at 16:19

1 Answers1

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Use the Light Path input node Is Camera Ray socket as the factor to your Mix Shader node

enter image description here

This will result in the Emission being used for everything but the Camera (so it will be used for lighting the scene) and only the Diffuse Shader will be used when viewed direct from the camera.

Rich Sedman
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  • Thank you. For a moment it looked like it was still brightening the texture, but realized it was the reflection from the floor. I added another "Emission Mask" so that I could individually control the brightness of the texture separate from the actual light. – Edward Jan 07 '17 at 14:16