There are several threads and issues about ~“dark models”, and the answers until now have been a bit handwaving and not really acknowledging this as an issue.
Can we agree that the default environment map and SHs just are too dark, and this should be tracked in an issue and fixed?
I’ll have look up some details about the default lighting and enviornment handling and what else determines the brightness, and I’m particularly curious about where and why the decision was made to pick this as the default:
I think that the default should be brighter. And I know what will happen after this is fixed: People will complain that the models are too bright. And the reason is that people already tweaked the scene.light.intensity, the model.lightColor, or the model.imageBasedLighting.imageBasedLightingFactor according to their needs. But instead of recommending these workarounds, we should probably fix the underlying cause.
EDITED: Other recent threads that are very likely also caused by that: