What's the physical basis for this effect? Does it happen in reality or is it a style choice?

Dave_Rosenthal 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Simple answer: There is no physical basis, it's style

Pedantic answer: Unless the light source has different colors on different sides

Complex answer: Kind of. Even a linear color fade (from reality) can turn non-linear (and therefore induce color effects) when pushed through a color grading pipeline. So if you count e.g. film emulation as a "physical effect", then yes.

	▲	dylan604 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> when pushed through a color grading pipeline. So if you count e.g. film emulation as a "physical effect", then yes. I've seen some footage from a particular Red camera body that introduced some very interesting effects. This particular camera had an issue with the Green channel. The camera was used in a commercial shoot for some fast food chain's shakes. The whip cream would turn magenta when the exposure was pushed because the green channel just wouldn't get there as fast as the red and blue channels. The secondaries had to go dig out extra green channel data plus other tricks to get the whip cream to end up white. After pushing other footage, the magenta tint could be seen else where as well. TL;DR it's not just film emulsion issues where weird edge case things like this happen.

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soraki_soladead 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The post links another that goes into the theory a little: https://shahriyarshahrabi.medium.com/in-the-valley-of-gods-s...

Apparently a combination of Mie and Rayleigh scattering.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mie_scattering

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering

	▲	skupig an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think the effect the author is talking about is definitely caused by atmospheric scattering, but the painted effects are different. Those are more likely inspired by overexposure, aberration, HDR, etc. Makoto Shinkai specifically is a filmmaker and often emulates camera effects like lens flare.

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adamjs 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This seems more like a chromatic aberration "hack" for HDR landscapes (intensely-lit portions of the scene would have color fringing apparent at the boundaries of light/dark due to dispersion in the observer's lens).

(And it's def a style choice, looks cool when done right! :))

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_aberration

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AlotOfReading 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It happens in reality, though I've only noticed it with desert sunlight. It's caused by light cast into the penumbra from scattering and diffuse reflection. You can't see this in the lit area because your photoreceptors saturate, which looks white.

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alnwlsn 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not sure it happens with the sun, but if you have differently located light sources of different colors you can get shadows of different colors (because the shadow area is one source being blocked but it is still illuminated by the other sources)

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tobr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Came to ask this. I suppose if the edge of the sun glows in a different color than the rest, it would tint the edge of the shadow too? So maybe appropriate for sunsets, where the sky near the sun is red but the sun itself still glows bright white. Honestly just guessing.