Emissive Map
Texture for glowing surfaces
Also known as: Emission map · Emissive texture · Self-illumination map · Glow map
Definition
An emissive map is a texture that marks which parts of a surface glow and in what color, such as screens, lava, runes, windows and neon lights. It plugs into the Emissive Color input in Unreal Engine (Emission in Unity and Blender) and is visible without any light. Values brighter than white make a surface bloom, and in engines with dynamic global illumination a bright emissive surface can also cast light onto nearby geometry.
In production
Export emission as its own map, keep it black where nothing glows, and drive intensity with a multiplier in the material instead of baking brightness into the texture. Emissive surfaces do not light a scene in every engine or setting: Lumen can use them, baked lightmaps need them flagged, and ordinary lights are still needed for most illumination. Watch the intensity, because very bright emissive causes bloom and flicker.
Tools that use Emissive Map
See also
Bloom
Soft glow around bright pixels
Lumen
UE5 dynamic global illumination
Lightmap
Pre-baked indirect lighting
PBR
Physically Based Rendering
Albedo
Base colour without lighting
Master Material
Parent material that spawns instances
Missing Channel in Substance Painter
Add Height, Emissive or Opacity channels
Emissive Not Glowing
Bright material does not bloom