Overexposure Bug Caused by High-Poly Self-Illuminated Models (Since Enscape 4.0, Still Present in 4.9)

Enscape Requests, Issues, Discussions Enscape :: General
1

I have been encountering a persistent overexposure issue in Enscape since version 4.0, which is still present in 4.9. The bug occurs when the scene contains models with self-illuminated materials and a high polygon count. The overexposure happens regardless of the camera’s distance from such models, and even if the model is located anywhere in the file. The only way to resolve it is to hide or delete the high-poly, self-illuminated model.

When the problematic object is removed, scene lighting behaves normally. Disabling ray tracing also prevents the issue from occurring.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Create or import a high-polygon model into the scene.

  2. Apply a self-illuminated material to it.

  3. Observe overexposure in the scene, regardless of the model’s position relative to the camera.

  4. (Alternative reproduction) Apply a self-illuminated material to a simple box and duplicate it 100+ times to increase the total polygon count of self-illuminated objects.

  5. Notice that the exposure increases proportionally to the number of boxes, even when using different self-illuminated materials.

  6. Disable ray tracing and observe that the overexposure disappears.

Expected Result:

Lighting and exposure should remain stable regardless of polygon count or the presence of self-illuminated objects in the scene.

Actual Result:

Exposure becomes progressively brighter when the scene contains self-illuminated high-poly objects, and the effect worsens with higher counts of such geometry.

Additional Notes:

  • The problem is not tied to any specific model; even basic geometry such as duplicated boxes can trigger the bug.

  • The effect can go unnoticed until part of the scene becomes overexposed, making lighting adjustments unreliable.

Attachments:

2

Hi @Riley_1214 , and thank you very much for taking the time to report this so comprehensively.

If possible, as it only takes a moment to do so, could you please also forward this behavior via a support report (as detailed here)? This way, our official support team will receive it along with your machine specifications plus other details, and can review it accordingly.

You can simply include a link to this thread in the support report’s submission form so we have the full context right away. Feel free to let me know once sent in as well.

3

Hello Enscape Team,

I’m following up on a bug report I previously submitted via the Enscape feedback function.

The report concerned a consistent overexposure bug that occurs when using ray tracing with high-polygon, self-illuminated objects. The issue is easily reproducible and significantly impacts lighting accuracy. Disabling ray tracing is the only viable workaround, which is not ideal.

I was wondering if there has been any progress on a fix for this bug, or if it’s on the roadmap for an upcoming update?

I know the team works hard on developing and improving Enscape, and I really appreciate you taking the time to look into this. Any information you can provide would be a great help.

Thank you,

Riley

4

Hello @Riley_1214 , I am trying to understand the issue here so please bear with me

When you are duplicating the boxes, do you keep them in the same position or scatter them around? Generally when duplicating the boxes, we are increasing the geometry count but we are also increasing the total surface area that emits light. Having more emissive area, we have more photons travelling in the scene and it becomes brighter. The proper way to test if more geometry increases the overall brightness would be to subdivide the object to have more triangles but keep the total surface area the same.

In Visual Settings we have a setting to automatically change the exposure based on what the camera sees each frame, so you could also disable that and set a specific amount for the exposure. Then you can more easily see how much brighter/darker the scene gets when changes to the lighting are applied.

5

Thank you for your reply.

The overexposure issue occurs regardless of where the self-illuminated model is placed in the scene. The higher the polygon count of the emissive model, the more severe the overexposure becomes — even if the model is moved far away from the main area of the project. As long as that emissive, high-poly model remains in the file, the problem persists. Once it is deleted or the emissive material is replaced with a non-emissive one, everything returns to normal.

The automatic exposure setting you mentioned is disabled in my case. However, the overexposure does not affect the entire scene globally — it happens only in specific areas such as certain walls or rooms. For example, in the test project shown in my earlier report (a residential floor plan), only the walk-in closet is affected. When I delete the emissive light strip or remove its emissive material, the lighting returns to normal.

This issue is very disruptive, and it still exists in the latest version. It often causes me to discover the problem only after rendering, meaning I need to redo lighting adjustments from scratch. In many cases, it’s actually faster to disable ray tracing entirely and readjust the lighting rather than trying to locate which emissive object is causing the bug — which can be extremely time-consuming.

I can share the test file with you if needed, but from my experiments, this issue consistently occurs across different projects whenever self-illuminated materials are involved.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xByPLDnaKV4FSImjkyf0gUN6c0TljYpL/view?usp=sharing

6

Thanks for providing the test scene, I reproduced it very easily! Unfortunately I couldn’t find a workaround except reducing the amount of triangles. I documented it internally and we should be able to fix it.

Again, I appreciate sharing the test scene with us.