How, if at all, do we want to include emissive materials for camera simulation?

[ekuehn-dspace]

Emissive materials are often used for neon signs, TVs and other applications to make a surface look like it's emitting light.

The problem is that strictly speaking, we are trying to simulate light (which should not be part of the material definition).
However, it is common practice in real time rendering to use emissive values.

If we decide to support emissive materials, we also need to find a way to define them. At dSPACE, we use cd/m2 as unit of luminance.
There might also be an issue regarding color banding. AFAIK Unreal Engine uses 8bit RGBA color as an input for Emissive Color which might not be enough for some "light sources".

We already started the discussion last meeting but did not come to a definite conclusion.

So, do we want to support emissive materials and if so, how can we implement them?

[ClemensLinnhoff]

Result of discussion on 04.09.2024: Very important topic, but might be pushed to a future OpenMATERIAL version.