I am working on a scene, and it looks great during the light cache pass and pre-pass. The colors are spot on, but when it renders the colors go way bright.
Bobby, I know this is becoming a bit of a broken record with your problems but could you post some screenshots and/or settings?
Otherwise it’s quite hard to help 
it must have been a glitch. I stopped/started the render and the issue resolved itself.
When using Light Cache and Irradiance Map, the image is quite close to my settings. However, when it comes to rendering, even without a light source in the scene, it appears shadowless and too bright.
I took screenshots to help you understand. Please note that I previously achieved exactly the renders I wanted with the same settings. There’s just a problem now.
Open up a ticket with the scene attached and we’ll investigate.
Thank you so much for your interest.
I hope we can find a solution, I’m in a very busy period.
This is the first time I’ve encountered such a problem, I’m not a novice but I haven’t been able to solve it.
Problem Seample 01.rar (2.3 MB)
The brightening is caused by the color mapping settings:
It happens without a light because you have a VRaySky in the environment (and in the environment overrides).
Not sure what effect you are after, but overall, you are using ancient settings. I suggest you reset them to the defaults (Render Setup > Settings > Render setup preferences) and continue from there.
I personally stopped changing setting a couple of years ago. Default works well for almost everything.
Hello everyone…
First of all, thank you for your help.
I initially tried using the default settings, as you suggested.
However, I ended up solving it myself.
Here is the explanation:
I changed the Light Cache value to 0.8
and the Irradiance Map value from 0.8 to 1.0.
And that fixed it.
his image shows a value of 0.8.
Both of these images show a value of 1.0.
That’s exactly the render I wanted.
I’d also check the scene’s exposure and gamma settings before tweaking the material too much. I’ve had cases where the material looked overly bright, but it turned out to be a lighting or color mapping issue rather than the material itself.