I am trying to assemble scene assets and one asset needs an emission material where only the white part emits light:
I set up a texture with a simple (air-quotes) "mask" for the window...
...and tried to make only the white part emit light. This attempt blew up the entire material though (verified by checking model, adjusting intensity). I also tried plugging in the base texture directly but when I turned up the intensity, it looked like the black frame became a deeper black as well, which is not what I want.
Changing the intensity with just the white input and scalar multiplier does not reveal the black metal portion of the diamond pattern. How can I update this graph so that only the white part glows?
I want to use the texture to light the scene but may settle for filler lights, since it could be overkill. Here is the original scene I put together in Blender. The camera will be fixed like this. Note also that there are 9 other windows that emit light in this scene but are made invisible:
Would it be wise to try to illuminate this scene with these window materials only, like I did in Blender, or is it cheaper to do it with lights? The camera will be fixed like this.
Thank you to everyone who takes an interest in helping me solve this problem, your time is appreciated.