Texture emission in render

[purpleagency]

Hey there,
I have an object I would like to glow, and to see the glow reflected on other objects. Only, in order for the glow to be bright enough to appear on the other objects, I have to crank the settings so much that the object itself is completely blown out. Is there a way to fix this in render? Or is this a job for post, and if so, which passes would have the info I need?

Thanks

[frankmci]

It sounds like an exposure issue; one of those, "well, it actually works that way in the real world, even though you want something different," situations. You could render to a high bit depth and adjust your curves/exposure in post. Or...

One in-render work-around is to use two different "illumination" objects, one that is visible to the camera and looks the way you want it to, but which is not actually casting illumination, (or perhaps sufficient illumination), and another object that is not visible to the camera, which is casting the illumination, (or the additional desired illumination). Personally, I think it's cleaner to have each object's illumination influence be all-or-none, than to have both casting mixed illumination; it's a lot easier to keep track of what's going on.

There are a few different ways to set it up, depending on the needs of your scene, but a combination of the Octane Object Tag's Visibility settings and the Emission Node's Visibility settings should do the trick.