2026-06-29 · ten colour schemes, each a ~15-second looping clip spinning through the cloud canopy from many angles — captured live off the renderer. We don't pre-ban any colour by doctrine; we build the whole range, see it in motion, and let the eye decide what's in and what's out.
The mindset (the point of this page). The bible is a guide, not a gate that stops us looking. So here is the full range under test — the muted ones, the bold fiery one we'd been told to "leave," and a genuinely strange combination — all on the same clouds, in motion. Judge them with your eye, not a rule.
One honest caveat: these test colour direction (hue / temperature / mood). They are all still flat in value — the deep darks aren't here yet. Studying Church's Twilight in the Wilderness showed the real secret of a great sunset is VALUE (deep darks + rationed glow), not chroma — that's the next build. So judge the palette direction here, knowing the value drama lands next.
The day, warm to cool
Golden hourhome key — warm light, cool shadow; nostalgia, the comfortable default the others are measured against.Dusk · balancedflagship — soft pink-peach, warm crowns over a cool sky. Candlelight in a rain-soaked harbour.Dusk · pink — the same dusk pushed toward rose.Dusk · gold — the same dusk pushed toward warm amber.Alpenglow — magenta-rose light over deep cobalt. (True high-gold/low-grey hierarchy needs the value step.)Dawn — cool, clean, washed, high-value; hope, the forward-looking morning.Blue hour — cool-dominant deep slate, one faint warm seam; solitude, contemplation.
The bold & the strange (tested, not banned)
Fiery (bold)the "leave" one — saturated, warm, dramatic. The one doctrine said skip. Here it is on our clouds — does your eye agree, or is there something here?Strange combounique — teal-green zenith, a green-gold horizon break, salmon clouds. The unexpected pairing; the kind of sky that's beautiful because it surprises.Stormweather, not time — charcoal-teal, desaturated, brooding. A mood the module paints as a profile, no shape change.
Drive it yourself
Every scheme is a live profile — pick from the Profile dropdown and drag Time of day:
Each is just authored "paint" on the same decoupled colour engine — swap, edit, or build a brand-new one whenever a real sky surprises you. The next build is the value drama (the deep darks) that makes any of these sing instead of wash.
Method: _lab-tour.mjs drives the live render through a 15-second looping ground-up tour (yaw spins 360°, pitch + position bob) per profile, HUD hidden, ffmpeg → mp4 video loops. The schemes are authored colour profiles on the Sky Colour Profile module (decoupled from cloud shape). We catalogue the full gamut and let the CD's eye — not a doctrine — decide what ships.