I think for 2.8 the emission node’s default color should be changed to pure white 1,1,1. Now it’s set to 0.8,0.8,0.8 which makes sense in other nodes like diffuse, glossy etc., but I think people usually expect emission to behave like a light driven by strength, but they get 80% intensity. I realize that lights are tuned to fit the scene so stronger values are used, but it seems inconvenient. Transparent node is also set to 1,1,1 which is a value it’s mostly used with.
Since in 2.8 filmic is the new default for color management, 1,1,1 is no longer pure white so I do not think this would make much of a difference…
This is not about filmic at all. Filmic can map even values like 50 under 1,1,1.
It’s more about consistency when you have a light 0.5x0.5 m with intensity 1 can it gives you certain illumination, but with 1x1m mesh light (different sizes due to different illumination behaviour between lights and mesh lights) is 80% illumination because the default color is 0.8,0.8,0.8. Why would anybody want this? It’s an unnecessary step to change the color.
See this scene.
I’m using a fully reflective plane because I can sample colors directly and it shows the invisible light. All CM is turned off, but it doesn’t matter because what’s interesting are raw values without CM.
I think 2.8 would be a great opportunity to change the default because it’s allowed to break backward compatibility.
Default 0.8 in other shaders (except transparency) makes sense, because in nature there aren’t pure white or black or 100% reflective surfaces, so it makes a nice default for a physically plausible scene.
Agreed, I’ve now changed the default to 1 1 1.