Light Emitting Texture In Blender

Light Emitting Texture

Here’s a method in Blender of applying a patterned texture to an object and having it seem to emit light but have the light emitted only from certain parts of the texture.

Note:  The light emitting from the texture does not illuminate other objects – I haven’t yet found a way of getting indirect lighting to work with this.

Pre-requisites:  A black and white pattern such as the one below.

Cog Wheel Pattern

Step 1 – Start Blender with the default cube that it creates for you.

Blender Default Cube

Step 2 – Go into the Texture settings, set Type to “Image or Movie” and open the your pattern image.

Select Image Texture

Step 3 – Still in the Texture settings, in the Image sub-section, un-tick “Use Alpha” (this bit is crucial and took me ages to find).

Untick Use Alpha

Step 4 – In the Influence sub-section, un-tick “Color” and tick “Emit”.

Tick Emit

Step 5 – Increase the Emit value to say 5 and hit F12 to render the scene and see the result.

Increase Emit And Render