They're plenty smart but they're talking about a different use case.
You don't know what color will be emitted unless you know what light is hitting the surface.
A dark glowing surface and a bright non-glowing surface have the same emissions under white light, but different emissions under other kinds of light. The method you're talking about requires the emissions be precalculated, which means you can't apply lighting at runtime.
You don't know what color will be emitted unless you know what light is hitting the surface.
A dark glowing surface and a bright non-glowing surface have the same emissions under white light, but different emissions under other kinds of light. The method you're talking about requires the emissions be precalculated, which means you can't apply lighting at runtime.